Centurion
by drakensis
Summary: It's a little startling to find yourself a battleship. It's even worse to find yourself at the start of what you know is going to be the most savage war in the long and bloody history of the Inner Sphere. Stefan Amaris is seizing control and the Star League is falling apart. But there's one praetorian guard who no one has taken into account...
1. Chapter 1

**Entry #1**

 **High Orbit, Jupiter**

 **Terran Hegemony**

 **17:56 27 December 2766**

I wake crisply and without hesitation.

A very strange experience for me. No gradual awareness and curling up under the covers, secure in the knowledge that I don't have such a foul item as an alarm clock in my house.

No covers in fact.

Just the cold chill of space against my skin.

Probably a good thing that rather than my usual fleshy bits, what's exposed is a few hundred tons of lamellor ferro-carbide.

Status reports don't explain the how or the why. They do give me some context. I'm not who I had been, that much is clear.

I'm now SLS Praetorian, an M-6C drone warship. The only M-6 drone warship in fact – the programme had been discontinued for reasons that weren't clear from the documentation available to me, but the cover-story was that the prototype had crashed into Pluto due to drive control problems. Plausible enough, given the very public problems SLS Enterprise (the failed carrier, not the current flagship of the High Command's Squadron) had had in 2750.

Except, obviously enough, I exist.

Wrapped in several thousand tons of equipment that - in addition to monitoring surrounding space in quite decent detail, which _was_ its supposed purpose - disguise me as a simple automated station rather than a hidden warship, but nonetheless very much not a shattered wreck on the surface of Pluto.

My name gives me the needed clue as to my intended purpose. A 'last resort' ship, capable of providing protection to the First Star Lord if even the SLDF had turned against him. And judging by the date…

Oh.

Oh _shit_.

No wonder I just got brought online (coded transmission from Royal Security at the Court of the Star League if you're interested) – it looks like they've activated every contingency they have. They might not even know exactly what I am, given how tight security around me would be). The _Amaris Coup_ just kicked off.

"BROB! _You asshole!_ "

Besides shouting (pointless in space, but slightly satisfying) I blow the explosive bolts that held the confining space station components around me and crack open my navigational database. Being hidden in the rings of Jupiter (yes, it has them, although not such impressive examples as Saturn) I'm almost a light hour from Terra. It'll take days to get there unless I can find a pirate jump-point.

Fortunately transitory points are common in a relatively cluttered planetary system like Jupiter's. One would be viable in a little over ten minutes and I can be there in time – barely. Firing up my main engines from cold violates several engineering regulations but right now that was a risk I'd have to take. I probably stripped about a decade off the engines life expectancy. Hopefully that won't be coming out of my non-existent paycheck. Anyway, I'm on the move.

Okay, weapons and systems check.

Despite being locked away in a space station for a couple of decades (had Richard even _known_ about me? I might never know) almost everything is performing to spec – the usual Ragnarok-proofing of this technology base is paying off. There are five squadrons of M-39-007 drone fighters in my hangers, as well as two other drone shuttles. Presumably for evacuating the First Lord and his family. Is that even going to be possible right now? I suspect not, although Richard's wife and daughter will still be alive until Amaris wiped out House Cameron in a few days. Dammit, _wipes_ out.

I need information but there's nothing else coming from Royal Security. Their transmitter must have been knocked out – an hour ago. What I do pick up are radio spikes from the direction of Terra. Nukes – big, anti-shipping nukes. I can guess what that is: Republican warships taking out orbital stations and warships. Probably the Lunar bases as well.

There are literally hundreds of civilian dropships around Terra, right in the crossfire. Hundreds more in transit or at jump points. Thousands of people are already dead.

 _Fuck!_

Yeah… not going to lie. My temper's a bit frayed.

Five minutes to the jump point. K-F drive is charged, fortunately. Same for my LFB.

There's fighting at both the standard jump points, but that's pretty much over and done with if my memory serves me well. Mars isn't going to be much better. If I do any good then I need support and that means heading for Terra.

The tactical situation isn't good, just better than anywhere else. The SDS network must have been disabled or this would be suicide for the Republican warships. That leaves a relative handful of garrison ships to back up First Fleet – which is already scattered across half the Star League. Thirteenth and Sixteenth Squadrons are with General Kerensky. Elements of the Eleventh and Fourteenth Squadron are off playing glorified taxi for various dignitaries, drawing escorts out of Fifteenth Squadron. So perhaps half of those ships along with Twelfth and Seventeenth Squadrons. Fifty, maybe sixty warships. It's still a good force I remind myself.

But Amaris knows that, he has surprise and he's got ships already in the system 'reinforcing' the defenses. And I know that it works for him. He _wins_ these battles.

Or did he? Searching my memory – which may not be perfect but at least now that I'm a computer it shouldn't fade further – I'm not entirely sure. It was very close. A strategic loss, but at least a handful of ships escaped.

So that leaves _me_ to make a difference.

One more battleship – I'm built on the hull of a _Texas_ -class ship, an old but far from obsolete design and I'm not exactly a stock model – might be enough to turn the tide. I'd have to maximise my advantages though. I can't afford a victory that leaves Terra open the moment reinforcements arrive: Amaris has ships nearer than Kerensky does.

I have to think of the war, not just this battle. Two minutes to the jump point. Ideas, ideas… if I was a brilliant military strategist, what would I do? It's not as if I lack for inspirational figures…

* * *

 **Entry #2**

 **LaGrange Point One, Terra**

 **Terran Hegemony**

 **18:07 27 December 2766**

I jump in singing.

It's a psychological weapon, and not just because I'm not exactly a good singer. The moral is to the physical as ten is to one.

Besides, I'm cheating. The Republican ships' computer systems are protected from electronic warfare but public infonet? Not against military-grade gear they're not. Hell, the songs I know are far too old to be under copyright. Harder to find them than it is to get copies.

 _"Another mission, the powers have called me away. Another time to carry the colours again. My motivation: an oath I've sworn to defend. To win the honour of coming back home again."_ I switch that off to automatic and let the playlist I'd set up handle it. I'm pumping it out on every channel I can pick up Republican code on. That oughta get their attention. And hopefully give them the impression I'm mad as a hatter.

Ian Cameron Shipyards are dead ahead. No SLDF warships in the vicinity but there are a couple of _Aegis_ -class cruisers covering marine transports. Looks as if they're securing the ships that are still in the slips. Should I take the time to deny them the ships? Possibly, but right now it's not an immediate priority.

Part of my attention goes to assessing the wider tactical situation. It's a mess – there's scrap everywhere and civilian dropships still trying to get the hell away. Most of the scrap is probably from them but I can see the forward half of a SLDF _Congress_ -class frigate adrift. Looks like a nuke penetrated their armour and blew the rear apart. Someone's worked the front over just to be sure.

The two cruisers are still trying to figure out how to respond to my presence. Too bad for them. I'd been moving pretty fast when I jumped and I didn't need to change my vector much to slide between them. Their fire control is hesitant – probably because a missed shot from one might hit the other. I'm under no such restraint and give them each a broadside _en passant_.

A _Texas_ -class battleship would be firing two massive arrays of naval lasers, a heavy naval autocannon and two quad turrets of particle beams into each of them. I don't have the lasers… but that's fine. Each of my broadsides has _eight_ quad turrets, almost doubling my broadsides' firepower. One of the _Aegis_ comes apart under the pounding. The other cruiser's a bit more fortunate, or just more stubborn, and ignores fires blazing along one flank as it tries for my rear as I maneuver and start launching my fighters.

Fortunately the heavy naval autocannon in its nose aren't able to pin-point me – those are current refit designs I note – but a trio of missiles strike my starboard rear quarter. Battleships are supposed to be part of a squadron that can keep such nuisances away from them. I seem to have lost mine somewhere.

Twisting to avoid another salvo I lock on with four particle beam turrets and my aft coilguns. Just before the nose of the cruiser turns into so much confetti I decipher its IFF as being RWS _Executioner_. How ironic.

"Boom! Headshot." And then I laugh, wild and maniacal across an open broadcast. Turning sharply pushes warning indicators for hull stress into the amber but it brings my other broadside to bear on the marine transports. "Want to see a magic trick? I can make Rimjobs disappear." Particle beams lash out. "Just like that."

I transmit that in the clear. Most of the responses coming back are just as transparent and more or less added up to "What's going on over there?"

The wider tactical situation is confused but the Republicans either didn't bring enough to the party or they've taken considerable losses. As far as I can tell numbers are about even – thirty or so surviving ships each. First Fleet's scattered though – I can pick up at least three concentrations and one of the ships I'm not picking up is SLS _Terra_. Fortunately I can pick up a couple of other flagships but I'm damned if I know who's senior – Vice Admiral Peterson on SLS _Star League_ or Vice Admiral Mroczkiewicz on SLS _Enterprise_. Not as if either's technically in my chain of command but it'd be useful to know.

On consideration, the former is probably my best bet. I changed course towards _Enterprise_ – it's a lucky name and she's nearer anyway – _Star League_ is making for low orbit over North America. The playlist advances a notch and Stan Bush assures me that I've 'got the touch'. Thanks Stan.

There are a lot of M-5 and M-3 drones sitting out the fight. Probably lack of orders, which is kind of a crippling flaw when you come down to it. Once I'm a bit closer, maybe I can do something about that. It'd be nice to think the fancy tactical computer sitting somewhere in my hull wasn't just for show. I'll be bypassing a few squadrons on my way.

Further away, everything seems quiet over Luna. A little too quiet – the moonbases are silent as graves which is probably appropriate – but Tranquility Station is there and… oho. I almost forgot.

The grand old lady of the fleet – SLS Dreadnought – a museum piece but still in working order after more than five centuries. And if memory serves, she'll complete her BattleStar Galactica analogy by escorting a rag tag fleet to the edge of the Hegemony over the weeks to come. I'd really prefer a happier ending.

One of my transmitters repositions. "SLS _Praetorian_ to SLS _Dreadnought_. The local HPG network is down. As soon as you're fuelled, get to a jump point and head for Capellan space. Use deep space jump points and alert the Commanding General."

I get a response within moments, tightbeam like mine. "This is Rear Admiral Castillo. Who is this?"

Great, a pissing match. Just what I don't need. "I am the Ghost of the Black Watch. The First Lord is dead. If you don't want the Star League to follow then get word out. I _know_ that the _Dreadnought_ won't let Terra down."

It'd take a few minutes more for the reply so I start working on establishing contact with the other drone warships. Frustratingly, the security lockouts will only accept my signals if I send them via the Tactical Computer, which limits me to only five of them at once. Better than nothing, but if I could get them all moving then this battle would be over fast. Too bad they'll revert to standby if I don't keep them networked. More than a hundred drones against perhaps thirty hostile warships? Squish.

Another identity challenge arrives – this time from the squadron I'm heading for. They must have seen me take out those cruisers because their current adversaries aren't even bothering to make contact. Then again, actions speak louder than words. Speaking of which, Tom Petty. I Won't Back Down. Great song and a suitable message to add to the mix.

"SLS _Praetorian_ ," I ping them back. It's not the Admiral, just some comm officer so I can afford to be curt. "I'm picking up an escort. Expect me to make a fast pass on the enemy squadron, ETA ten minutes. _Nos morituri te salutamus_." We who are about to die, salute you. Gallows humour. Death isn't part of my plans for today – not _my_ death at any rate. But there are few opponents more feared than a kamikaze and if anyone picks up my signal – not _impossible_ – then it'll give them something to worry about.

Engines flared ahead as three M-5 drones and a pair of M-3s slot into my command net and started to manuver into formation for when I overtake them.

* * *

 **Entry #3**

 **High Orbit, Terra**

 **Terran Hegemony**

 **18:29 27 December 2766**

I've got a hard read on my opponents now. One of the Rim Worlder's two battleships in this fight – not RWS _Stefan Amaris_ but one of her sister ships – supported by a lone Riga-class frigate and six tin-cans - four _Baron_ -class and a pair of _Carson_ -class destroyers.

They look pretty fresh, which was a shame because _Enterprise_ is backed up by only four other ships now, all damaged. One _Black Lion_ -class battlecruiser and three cruisers (a pair of _Sovetskii Soyuz_ and a _Luxor_ ) might be a decent match for their opposition if they hadn't already taken a beating but right now whoever won was going to be near-enough out of the fight anyway.

Of course, that excludes my own presence.

The Republican ships can hardly miss my approach – but they can also tell perfectly well that I'm going too fast for an extended engagement. Looks like they plan to tough it out and keep fighting their way through to Enterprise.

" _Praetorian_ , this is Vice Admiral Mrockiewicz." It's a grim voice: the man's seen his whole universe collapse around him in the last hour and a half. "Who's in charge over there?"

"Just me." I watched the Rim ships. This would take careful timing. If they caught onto what I was planning they could make it very difficult to pull off.

"Don't pull this shit with me, son. Who is in command of the _Praetorian_? This is no time for games."

Ouch. Sounds as if he's tempted to fire on me himself. That would be… less than optimal. "My apologies Admiral, but I'm a little distracted right now. No one is aboard. You are speaking to _Praetorian_ directly. I am an M-6C drone warship, subordinate directly to the First Star Lord."

Hmm. I'm not getting a response. This is a mite ominous. Too late to worry now though, my fighters are hitting the screening elements of the Republicans. Time for some last minute course adjustments.

I've overtaken the other drones, although the M-3s should be able to catch up again before too long – those things are _fast_. The M-5 Caspars won't be able to – but that's fine. All I need them for right now is to tip this fight in favour of the SLDF. I can replace them in my command net before I reach Terra.

The only reason the Republican fighters worried me was that they might be packing nuclear-tipped missiles. Taking one of those to the prow would be a bit of a problem. Of course, the warships almost certainly _were_ carrying nukes but by the time I was in range for them to be firing at me, it would be too late – and they might not have any left at this stage in the battle. That was a necessary risk, letting fighters close in was _not_.

Whether they had nuclear missiles or not, the fighters didn't have the same weapons reach as the Voidseeker Strikers did. Seven of them came apart as my drones opened up with lasers and LRMs. Then the range closed and the exchange got more equal. Five, six kills… but I lost eight drones.

The seven surviving Republican fighters either don't have any nuclear weapons or they are too busy to use them as I barrel through the formation. One of them doesn't get out of the way and I wind up taking him to the prow – fortunately just on armour rather than on anything important. Twenty of the Strikers fall in with me, drives burning to catch up, two don't – engine damage so I leave them to keep the fighters busy.

Time for final course corrections. The playlist I'm sharing with the Rimjobs switches to Motorhead. "It's time to play the game…" I sing along with the long dead Lemmy Kilmister. "Time to play the game!" Thrusters flare across my hull as I corkscrew into the Republican formation laughing mordantly, the two M-3s now only a little behind me, their weapons striking out at the squadron's innermost layer of fighters.

"It's all about the game, and how you play it." There's a triangle formed by the courses of three destroyers and I spin through it spraying particle beams at each of them in turn. Only one salvo scatters across the lot of them and three of my turrets don't even come to bear but that's more firepower than ships that small ever want to know – and I'm within fifty kilometres – like I'd miss at that range! "All about control and if you can take it."

A _Carson_ and a _Baron_ just explode. Another _Baron_ staggers away, its spine flayed open but still boldly lashing at me with its broadside lasers. One of my drop collars is slagged. "All about your debt and if you can pay it." I reward the crew's determination any yawing over and engaging with my forward coilguns and one of the autocannon, they shatter the forward half of the ship almost as thoroughly as the aft. "It's all about pain!" I bellow as the other Carson, flaming from stem to stern under fire from my three wingmen, drops out of formation. "And who's going to make it."

It wasn't at all likely that I'd have collided with any of the Republican warships on that pass. They were maintaining a sensible loose formation. A collision would almost have to be deliberate.

I saw the Republican frigate snap in two as an M-5 smashed nose first into its side. Then the fuel load inside the drone went up in a tremendous fireball.

"I am the game! You don't want to play me!" The battleship, RWS _Hector Rowe_ slewed widely, the command crew recognising where the other two M-5s were headed. Unfortunately they'd bracketed the larger ship neatly and it couldn't avoid both. One crashed alongside, armour peeling away from both hulls and turrets scattered across the void. The drone went sharply dead on my command net. "I am control, no way you can shake me!" I cried out as the second drone spun and brought its drive plume across the nose of the battleship, doing who knows what damage to the various systems there.

The two surviving destroyers raked the M-5 with their autocannon, punching holes in its armour and I cut the command links, confident that the self-defense protocols would take over. Sure enough, the damaged Caspar retaliated rather than sinking back into stand-by mode.

Amending my playlist to give them Thunderstruck to listen to once the current track finished and I point my transmitter back at the _Enterprise_. "All yours, Admiral. If you have the marines available then retaking the shipyards might be an idea – or at least disabling the ships that are docked. I don't know about you but I don't want Amaris using them to replace his losses."

A long moment later (I flatter myself that he was taking a moment to process the awesome), Mrockiewicz asks: "Who are you really? Don't try telling me you're one of the machines – they don't sound or act the way you do."

"Believe what you want to, Admiral," I reply. "You probably have more pressing concerns than existential discussion of my identity. For now, isn't it enough that I'm on your side?"

"I suppose. Can you wake up more Caspars?"

"Only a few at a time," I apologise. "And they'll revert to stand-by if I don't keep them under control – unless the Rim Worlders are obliging enough to shoot them, that is."

"You might want to stop singing then – you're making yourself a target for anyone with taste."

I laugh – but I also make a mental note: have the drones re-transmit the songs.

* * *

 **Entry #4**

 **Over Europe, Low Earth Orbit**

 **Terra, Terran Hegemony**

 **19:05 27 December 2766**

I hit the atmosphere hard, 'feeling' the burning as I used the thinner uppermost layers to slow myself. My 'escorts' covered me from above as I slowed myself to a useful combat speed.

Down below, the fight for the airspace over Europe was contested. Somewhere below me, the badly outnumbered Royal First Swiss Cavalry were holding back Republican regiments from seizing Geneva. While Unity City was the capital city of the Star League, the heart of the Terran Hegemony's government was in their traditional home in the Swiss Alps.

Slightly more concerning were the ground-based SDS systems – Sandhurst Castle Brian and the batteries in the British Isles were holding out, as was Sverlovsk but the northern European facilities had fallen with Bochum Castle Brian and reports from Cairo were conflicting.

I wasn't particularly keen to find out the hard way so as I angle north over Europe my missile tubes launch five pairs of capital missiles – a single conventional kinetic strike aimed for the key command nodes and a heavy nuclear warhead for the launch sites in Germany. I'm fairly sure that five hundred kiloton explosions aren't going to make me very popular in the future, but at least they might leave me around to be unpopular. "First Swiss Actual, this is Praetorian. Got targets for me?"

"I have the targets," a rather pleasant, German-accented voice confirmed, "If you have the service."

"With a smile, ma'am." My ballistics calculations take a fraction of a second, but I take a moment to double-check the co-ordinates against what I'm picking up below – both direction and from plugging into whatever civilian networks are still working. It's shocking how tough a speed camera can be in the twenty-eighth century. I made some final adjustments and then pulled the trigger, punching a flurry of heavy particle beams down through the atmosphere as I sweep over Lake Geneva.

Through magnified infra-red sensors I could see the explosions as shots rained down on an artillery battery that had been pounding on the defensive outposts occupied by the First Swiss. A couple of shots are close enough to hit ammunition carriers and that spread secondary explosions across the football pitch the heavy guns had deployed on. The shots marched on, raining down across a staging ground where infantry fighting vehicles and at least a battalion of 'Mechs had been preparing to assault the same position.

Looking down I can see human bodies and parts thereof scattered. These would be the ones that were on the edges of the impact zones.

Do I feel anything?

Not even recoil. Perhaps a little maudlin.

That might be for the best. I've got a mite more of this sort of thing do to.

"Much appreciated, Praetorian. When this is over, first round of drinks are on my boys and girls."

"All due respect," I answer her puckishly, "But for me a round of drinks is fourteen hundred tons of hydrogen fuel. And I can't even return the favour since I don't get paid."

There was a startled: "Pardon?"

"Never mind."

I clear the channel and open another to Sandhurst. The Castle Brian is associated with the military academy that dates back to my own time. Not that I've ever been there, and it'd be a touch difficult to do so in my new body. "Allo allo. Star League Naval Fire Support. You propose, we dispose."

"You're about as funny as a sick headache," a scouse accent declares sourly. "We're fine but a shot or two at the Temple wouldn't go amiss."

If I had eyebrows they'd be raised. "The one in _London_?"

"That's the one. Rimjobs are using the offices there as an HQ. And it's just bloody lawyers. No one will miss them."

I laugh and cue up Shoot to Thrill on my playlist. "You're a sick sick man. Consider those buildings razed. Any news from Unity City?"

There's an unhappy grunt. "Landline's cut. Last transmission was that they're evacuating the Citadel. The _Amaris_ and the _Star League_ are down."

What? "Figuratively?"

"No. The warships, you fool. Both of them crashed into the Pacific."

"Oh. That's… a bit of a loss." Counting myself there had been seven loyal SLDF battleships in the solar system this morning. Now we were down to two. Of course, the Republican fleet had now lost their second.

"Don't go to pieces on me, Navy."

"Fine, fine." I absently sent the targeting parameters, changing my playlist. Drums start to roll and then bagpipes cut in only jamming. Time for the real music of pain.

I unleash four shots, each from a different turret. The first was aimed for Pudding Lane, just out of historical perversity but I'd let myself get a little distracted and it hits the bank of the Thames, scattering mud and water over the Tower of London, Tower Bridge and HMS Belfast. Oops.

I corrected my targeting data and the second crashes down into Middle Temple Lane, blowing out buildings on both sides. The third hits further up the street, widening the entrance onto the Strand.

"How many of them can we make die?"

The last shot takes out the New Hungerford Bridge. It's at least ten times uglier than the one I remember so I consider this a public service.

"Bagpipes." Is that a note of amusement in the man's voice? I think it may be. "You really don't like the Rimmers, do you?"

"I don't like anyone, much. The Fat Man though…" I sigh, some thoughts crystallizing. "If you happen to have any members of House Cameron down there, try to keep them alive and out of his hands. I know it's a bit obvious but if we can't put one of them on the Star League Council when all's said and done, we may have some long term problems." London dropped behind me and the British Isles would be gone soon. I angled myself further north. There's another Castle Brian in Quebec – one that had fallen. Tacoma is probably still out of action… I hope. Warships all around Terra are converging over Unity City as if by mutual consent…

* * *

 **Entry #5**

 **Over North America, Low Earth Orbit**

 **Terra, Terran Hegemony**

 **19:35 27 December 2766**

Tacoma is operational. Lousy shots, fortunately, but operational.

I hammer their ears with Welcome to the Jungle and the weapon batteries with one of my broadsides as I take up position. The drones join me in the latter of the two – it's not as if we're short of targets and unless I want to take up a geo-stationary orbit and make myself an immobile target – we could only pick off so many on a single pass.

We aren't the only ships there – what's left of _Star League_ 's escorting cruisers: two _Sovetskii Soyuz_ and a _Luxor_ – are still duelling twice their number of what my sensors tell me are knock-offs of _Essex_ -class destroyers.

Much as I want to help them, right now we all have our own jobs to do.

Speaking of that, my launch bays open and reloaded Strikers hurtle forth. I'm down to nineteen of them and they're followed by my shuttles. This bit is a little risky but it has to be done.

There were still fighters in the sky over Unity City but somehow they weren't all Republicans. Judging by the mix of designs, the remaining SLDF fighters hadn't been a formed squadron but they were holding their own against an impressive number of Republican fighters – often of the same designs. I wouldn't be surprised if entire squadrons of RWR pilots hadn't simply taken fighters from captured SLDF bases. It was the sort of foresight that Amaris had put into this plan from the beginning.

Most of the fighting was over Unity City or what was left of Fort Cameron. With civilians in the one and a scratch battalion made up of senior officers from the Citadel fighting for the irradiated ruin (more because it controlled the approaches to the Citadel than for any inherent value) I decided against firing down into the air battle. I did spare a couple of shots for the front of the Royal Palace. Good luck making a speech from there now, Fat Man. Besides, it smashed a lance of the company of RWR Mechs securing the building, forcing the rest of the security to cower away.

"I don't suppose you have any Camerons down there?" I ask the Citadel. It's a long shot, but there might be a butterfly effect in our favour.

"That's a negative, _Praetorian_. No one's managed to get into the Palace since the Rimjobs took out the Black Watch."

"We need _someone_ the General can put on the High Council," I warn the General. Tamerlann Stefannson was one of the handful not evacuating. "How about the Draconian Ambassador?"

"For the High Council?"

I realise that I've skipped mentioning part of my chain of thought. "No, change of subject. The ambassador's the Coordinator's great-nephew and I'd rather the Fat Man didn't have that sort of leverage over the Dragon."

"Ambassadorial residences are inside the palace complex. We can't get near."

I spent a good three seconds contemplating that. "Got any jump infantry?" Shuffling my firing priorities again I picked out anti-aircraft turrets across the Court of the Star League.

"Negative, Praetorian. We can't risk the Usurper getting his hands on the High Command."

"Kerensky has his own staff on hand," I corrected him. "And if it's denial that's called for, sidearms exist for a reason. Making sure the Hegemony has a Director-General and that the Coordinator isn't in the Fat Man's pocket is a little more urgent than getting soldiers – however able and distinguished - out of the warzone."

"Easy for you to say, up there."

"I'm sure the infantry fighting block by block feel the same way about you in your bunker, General. What's worse: the death of the Judge Advocate General or the Draconis Combine joining forces with Amaris? Decide quickly."

"…you maniac!" the general exclaims, presumably advised of my shifting my fire. "You're bombarding the Court of the Star League!"

"I'm bombarding an enemy held position."

"If you miss by even a few metres, you could kill the First Lord!"

I consider being insulted at the idea of missing but given the London incident… And I have no way of actually knowing that Richard Cameron is dead. For that matter, it's remotely possible that Amaris might be having prisoners moved past my targets even if I'm doing my best to avoid bringing down anything that isn't part of the air defences.

"General, I understand your concerns. But the current crisis makes them secondary at best. I _will_ provide cover for your evacuation by dropship but I _need_ infantry to try to recover the Draconian ambassador and an adult Cameron. _Any_ adult Cameron. The fate of the Star League _literally_ depends on it. Depends on _you_. My shuttles will be with you any moment. Load whoever you want but I'll be flying them into the Court of the Star League."

There was a spluttering sound. "You're a cold-blooded son-of-a-bitch."

"Flatter me later, General. Or shoot me when my job is done."

Covered by the fifteen fighters that managed to survive getting down there the shuttles thunder down concealed runways, skidding to halt near Fort Baker's exits and the dropships preparing to launch from their hangers.

What scramble aboard can hardly be considered well-prepared combat platoons – they're a mix of security staff, desk troopers and senior officers. They're well-armed though and I notice without surprise that there's a technician lugging what looks like high powered hacking gear with each group. There's a perfectly good reason commando operations like this might need that skill-set, but somehow I think that they have another target in mind.

Being fair, under these circumstances _I_ wouldn't trust me. Hopefully they're going to try to get aboard me and not just hack the shuttles. It's not as if they have long to do that.

"Get in the seats, this's going to be fast and dirty." I slam the hatch behind them and the shuttles are moving before the last one's strapped in.

Flooding the airwaves with Queen's We Will Rock You, I switch tactics on the airbattle. Naval grade weapons are not intended to be brought to bear on something as agile as a fighter, but if you can afford to spray barrages sometimes you get lucky. In my judgement, this part of the mission is important enough not to worry about where the shots that don't hit fighters will end up hitting. Hopefully most of the civilians are in shelters by now.

Behind the curtain barrage, my Strikers clear a path for shuttles. It's fast, brutal and dangerous. It might work.

* * *

 **Entry #6**

 **Over North America, Low Earth Orbit**

 **Terra, Terran Hegemony**

 **19:45 27 December 2766**

Shuttles crash down in the Court of the Star League. One of those crashes is all too literal. A _Rifleman_ 'Mech at just the wrong place and time and the shuttle hits the ground far too fast and hard. It breaks up and the largest fragment ploughs straight through a block of offices.

The _Rifleman_ is singled out for my particular attention and a particle beam wipes it away. I can be a petty, vengeful son-of-a-bitch. No doubt General Stefannson will be pleased to learn it.

The other shuttle skids about half-way along one of the major avenues and comes to rest outside the exit to one of House Cameron's escape tunnels. It's like one of the pre-planned extraction operations except that the First Lord's family aren't waiting to run away. The men and women aboard are going to have to go into get them.

Assuming, of course, that they're in the adjacent bunkers. It's a logical place with limited access in and out. If Amaris knows all the secrets – and Richard might very well have told him this – then I could see him using it for his hostages. Or maybe a command centre. Getting the Fat Man wouldn't be quite as helpful in the long run but I'd not turn my nose up at it.

It's out of my hands. I can keep the Rimjobs from overunning the shuttle – I devote a turret to pulverising anyone trying – but down below the ground… Out of my hands. At least they all got out and the technician took his kit. I can probably still rely on the shuttle.

It'd be nice to have someone I trusted.

A pair of detonations in the sky above me pull my attention back to the battle. Nukes – not close enough to hit me but the electromagnetic pulse shut down my 'singing' for a moment. Perhaps that was all they wanted. I keep regaling them with Nightwish's Planet Hell, although I'm tempted to go over to 'A Song That Gets On Your Nerves'.

The source is the destroyers from earlier. Only two of them left, but the remaining _Sovetskii Soyuz_ is struggling not to fall into the atmosphere. Those crates just don't have the thrust for pushing their orbital limits.

The _Exeter_ s do. I hope they don't have any more nukes to throw at me. The guns in their noses hurl explosive charges down at me. It would appear that they aren't too concerned about where their shots will hit if they miss me.

Not all the shots do miss.

It hurts. I'd barely noticed before, but I'd not been hit before like this. The shells tear at my armour, fire stabbing into the systems beneath it and the damage control reports are _pain_.

The commanders of those ships survived for a reason. At the angle they're using, I have to make a choice: keep providing supporting orbital support fire down upon the city… or re-orientate myself to return fire.

Fortunately for me, I'm not alone. The _Caspar_ s are at entirely different angles and I can move them to return fire, switching targets as necessary between them. But my main batteries are the most powerful. I can engage the most targets.

I can scream and howl my pain and still rain down particle beams, high explosives and coilgun slugs upon the capital of human civilisation.

I didn't start this fight. But I did choose it and if I can sent those two dozen soldiers into the fight… if I can fly as many again to their deaths… then I can stand this. I may be bleeding hydraulic fluid and molten metals but if you prick me, I surely can bleed.

The _Essex_ s blaze away with desperation. They have only minutes before salvation arrives.

One minute. I switch tracks, announcing that they are in the Danger Zone. Two minutes.

Fighters ascend towards me and one of my M-3s drops to meet them, engaging the squadron in a fiery cataclysm. Wiped away in a matter of seconds the fighters are avenged when a previously silent laser battery spears the drone with long pulses of coherent light.

I, in turn, blot out the turret.

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

My endurance is rewarded when more cannon open up.

 _Enterprise_ is trailing fire from one hanger bay, but she's flanked by SLS _Theodor Logan_ and SLS _Kursk_ is covering their rear. Caught with their rears exposed the destroyers stagger under the barrage. Explosions march through the hull of one, as it comes apart. Its sister simply noses over into a graceful dive down towards Puget Sound, engines gone and escape pods erupting from the sides like one last barrage of missiles.

"General Stefannson has a great deal to say about you." Admiral Mroczkiewicz sounds – not amused but not quite as grim as before.

"Nothing complimentary, I imagine."

Down below, a column of heavy tanks crawls onto one of the bridges across the Duwamish. I wait until they're most of the way across and then put a shot from one of my coilguns into the end they're heading for. The other gun in the turret takes out the opposite end. While a couple of shark-flagged tanks wind up spilling into the water the rest are left marooned on the bridge. I suppose I can take out the piers later and get rid of them but right now stopping them from getting to Fort Cameron is good enough.

"There are some chain of command issues that we need to address."

He was very carefully not mentioning that in a fight between the _Enterprise_ 's battlegroup and mine it wasn't at all clear who would win.

"Like the fact I'm running rough-shod over yours?" I spot movement near the shuttle and mis-shapen figures are moving towards it from the same hatch that the strike force. It takes me a moment to realise that the distortion is because two of them are carrying children and the other two are pre-teens. "Hold that thought, Admiral. We may have our first evacuees on their way up."

At the shuttle someone slams their fist against the hatch. " _Praetorian_ , let us in!"

The camera there matches face and voice to one of the strike team: Colonel Edith Keeler. More importantly, the tear-stained face of the toddler she's carrying is a decent match for publicised images of Amanda Cameron. I pop the hatch and start preparations to launch. "The others?"

Her voice almost breaks as they scramble inside. "We're the only ones coming." They start strapping in as I slam the hatch and fire up the engines.

* * *

 **Entry #7**

 **Over North America, Low Earth Orbit**

 **Terra, Terran Hegemony**

 **20:03 27 December 2766**

"What's going on, _Praetorian_?" demands the Admiral.

"We have to pick up that shuttle."

Messages to the contrary are no doubt going to every remaining element of the Amaris forces in, over or around the city. That's why my first move isn't to send the shuttle up but instead out over the bay.

" _You_ need to," I amend myself. "I don't have any medical teams aboard and that might be needed."

"When I said we had issues with the chain of command I didn't mean putting you at the top," he grumbles but he turns away and gives orders to prepare to receive a shuttle.

It's not just the shuttle leaving the area now. At Fort Baker they've finally got their drop-pads opened up and a handful of small, fast dropships are ascending. Once they're recovered…

The fight will continue I suppose. But it's not going to be more than a holding action. Drawing resources here and away from other parts of the globe. That's the unmentioned elephant in the room. We can't save Terra. The losses on the ground are too heavy and without the _Caspar_ s, the space defenses can't hold out long either, not against the reinforcements that Amaris can call in.

We have to weight how much damage we can do to the Fat Man here against what good we can do elsewhere. We haven't reached the tipping point that means it's time to yet… at least to my mind. Still, other people have their own opinions. And may not, for some reason, want to follow plans put forward by a sapient battleship.

The good news is that with the air defense and the remaining Republican fighters concentrating on the shuttle, I think the dropships have a good chance of escaping them. That's hundreds of SLDF personnel rescued.

The _bad_ news, of course, is that the shuttle's passengers are probably more important. I unleash everything I have at the pursuing fighters, sending my remaining M-3 down to support the Strikers. Somewhere, somehow, Amaris had scraped together forty fighters. If they were all in one group or if they were all aerospace fighters, that would be enough but as it is half of them are airbreathers and they're converging into the pursuit.

With fighters from the _Enterprise_ – almost a full wing, probably filling gaps with survivors of the wings of ships that had been destroyed – coming down to take over I turn Strikers around and hit the leading elements head on. They punch straight past the startled leading squadrons, slashing at them as they go, and then engage the lighter conventional fighters behind them. Their targets are far too lightweight take that for very long and the sky is filled with the fireworks of their extermination as the Strikers pull high-G turns – something that doesn't do their airframes any good – to come back around on the tails of the heavier aerospace fighters.

That puts the Rimjobs in a tricky situation: with the Strikers tailgating them they're in no position to defend themselves, but if they break off fight back then their chances of catching the shuttle aren't all that good.

And knowing Stefan Amaris, if they don't show enough enthusiasm for killing the children on the shuttle, their own children might pay the price. There's something deeply unhealthy about the rulers of the Rim Worlds Republic.

Only a couple of fighters turned back to fight – far too few to even slow my fighters. The others pushed their throttles open in an effort to catch the shuttle. That wasn't any better for their fighters than the red-lining that the Strikers were doing but they had cockpits that they couldn't afford to breach and that wasn't a vulnerability that the drones shared. A few of them were fast enough to keep ahead – I wished briefly my wing included a few Interceptors – and close in on my shuttle.

As I hammer down fire upon the tanks on the bridge – the crews had had a sporting chance to get out and right now resource denial is the name of the game – I measure distances and hope that the fighters descending from _Enterprise_ will win the race.

Gravity is on their side but they have further to go.

Through the marvels of technology I pop my face up onto a screen inside the shuttle's passenger compartment. Well, not _my_ face, obviously. I kind of don't have one, but I have all of digitally recorded human history to pick from. Tom Jones, in his silver goatee era, is close enough for government work: mature and yet charming. They're all strapped in, Colonel Keeler next to the potentially Cameron toddler and the other lady with one hand on the smallest of the three children sat next to her. Her kid, presumably. With that focus it's the two tweens that notice me first.

"Ahhh! Creepy old man!" the girl shrieks.

…everyone's a critic. "Don't bug me, kid. I'm having a bad day. So. I know one of you for sure, can someone tell me who I'm delivering to Vice Admiral Mroczkiewicz?" I paused. "Okay, and before anyone says anything, I _am_ aware that nobody else here's day has been peaches and cream either."

Colonel Keeler is cut off by the boy. "I am Lord Joseph Kurita, son of Lord Drago Kurita, Ambassador of the Draconis Combine to the Court of the Star League. And what is your name?"

Okay. That's something. Not much, but something. "Call me Praetorian. Want to make the introductions, Lord Kurita?"

Colonel Keeler looks about ready to speak but restrains herself. Hmm. Edith Keeler. I wonder if she has a relative by the name of Edwin – or perhaps even a husband. Probably not, Keeler isn't that uncommon a name.

"This is my sister Johnna," (The other tween). "Our brother Tu." (The younger kid. I refrained from asking where Wun had gone). "And our mother."

"Charmed." I pause and when he doesn't go on: "Colonel Keeler? Who's the sprog?"

"The child," she tells me in a tight voice, "Is the First Lord's daughter."

That makes it official. I've ordered a full meal and got served a child's portion instead. I reminded myself that with only one survivor from the improvised strike force, I was lucky to get anything at all. "Well done, Colonel. Do you have any information to report?"

Keeler hung her head. "Lady Cameron was shot during the escape. Amaris told her that the First Lord was dead. Ambassador Kurita joined the forlorn hope trying to reach Amaris' command post." She looks at the children. "He said that if they failed, he would not be taken alive."

We both knew what that meant. Whether or not it had been necessary would probably be argued over at length but it wasn't my concern. "I understand." There's a roar of engines and the shuttle rocks slightly.

"What was that?" Lady Kurita asks – fairly composedly under the circumstances.

" _Enterprise_ 's fighters winning a race," I tell her, watching the Republican fighters tumbling out of the sky.

* * *

 **Interlude #1**

 **SLS _Enterprise_ , High Orbit**

 **Terra, Terran Hegemony**

 **23:30 27 December 2766**

It was hard to believe that it was less than nine hours since the universe had taken a sharp turn for the worse. Santiago Mroczkiewicz was all too conscious he might be called to the bridge at any moment so although he'd broken out a bottle of brandy he hadn't indulged himself. Most of his guests were sparing their consumption but Vice-Admiral Shatliov was on his second glass and Colonel Keeler had tossed her first one back with abandon and was now eyeing the bottle with ill-disguised interest.

She probably deserved it. "Help yourself, Colonel," Mroczkiewicz offered. Her report had been… raw.

Keeler accepted the bottle and splashed the contents into her glass. "If you don't mind my asking, what happens now?"

Mroczkiewicz leant forwards in his chair. "That's what we're about to decide, Colonel. Although our new friend _Praetorian_ had some suggestions."

"Of course it did," snapped Aslan Lybekk. The SLDF Quartermaster-General was apparently taking the warship's suggestion of suicide rather than capture as a personal insult. "Why that thing was ever turned on…"

"Are we sure it's really a drone?" As Deputy Director of Naval Command, Vincenzo McTiernan was more familiar with SDS drones than most of those in the room – if only indirectly. "They're not supposed to have that sort of initiative."

"It's hard to be sure without boarding, but there are no obvious signs of active life support and the shuttles it deployed were automated." Spreading his hands Mrockiwicz added: "Whether _Praetorian_ is a drone or has a really perverse crew, the ability to take over Caspars makes it a powerful ally. I can put up with the attitude and the mystery – for now."

"How about the music?"

"I'm assured some of it's quite catchy, which isn't to say I'll let my comm-crews start doing the same."

Shatliov refilled his glass. "So what does the machine suggest?"

" _Praetorian_ recommends evacuating as many of the Hegemony's leadership as possible from Geneva and then leaving the solar system." Mroczkiewicz raised his hand to still the complaints. "He argues… cogently… that Amaris has the preponderance of ground forces on Terra and can call in enough reinforcements from Mars, Venus and the jump points to very seriously threaten us – not to mention other systems. Given that we've destroyed twice as many warships today as he was supposed to have at all, I don't wish to under-estimate his potential reinforcements."

"In favour of evacuation, we have to send some ships away anyway," Keeler observed. She might be by far the junior person in the room, but her position as Amanda Cameron's de facto guardian gave her remarkable status in these murky circumstances. It was a status she was eager to be rid of, if not necessarily the child. "Lady Cameron said New Avalon – I'm not sure why."

Mrockiewicz's eyebrows rose. Although he too was outranked by some of those in the room the remaining warships had fallen under his command, making him field commander for what was left of the SLN over Terra. "I can shed some light there. According to _Praetorian_ , her father had asked John Davion to be her Regent if anything happened to him."

"Not his precious friend Stefan?" grunted McTiernan. "That's a surprise."

"Lady Cameron wasn't all that fond of Amaris. Too bad Richard didn't listen more to her. _Praetorian_ 's testimony doesn't have any legal weight of course, but I don't see any reason for it to lie." He grimaced. "And he had… pointed things to say about General Kerensky as a father figure. So I'll be taking a squadron at least as far as Cartago. From there I can get word to the First Prince and to the Commanding General."

There was no argument over that. "And the rest of us?"

"The other recommendations are that a couple of ships head for the Combine with Ambassador Kurita's family. _Praetorian_ seems impressed with the notion that it may convince Takiro Kurita to support the SLDF. I'm not sure why he expects trouble there but it can't _hurt_. The rest of our ships, he suggests, should fall back on one of the deep space rendezvous and start gauging the extent of Amaris' invasion and gathering other surviving ships together."

" _It_ suggests."

"Yes?"

"You said 'he'."

"A slip of the tongue." Mrockiewicz glanced around the room. "I'm open to other suggestions."

"No, I had much the same idea," McTiernan confirmed. "But I don't want _Praetorian_ involved in that. We'll need to keep that rendezvous secret and I don't trust that thing."

" _It_ reciprocates, Admiral. Thus its refusal to let anyone aboard, despite the damage. In any case, it's requesting scratch crews to handle jump operations for five M-5 drones – they have trouble with that, apparently – so it can raid other worlds and spread confusion. It'll take time for Amaris to restore the defenses that he destroyed and the longer we can drag that out, the more easily General Kerensky can liberate the Hegemony."

"He's also requested a ground element – the Royal First Swiss Cavalry have volunteered as soon as their dependents are fully evacuated and they've filled the gaps in their roster with cadets from Sandhurst. Maybe twenty-four hours if we can get some crews together. I've put out the word to civilian jumpships asking for anyone they can spare that has military experience."

"I've heard worse plans," conceded Lybekk grudgingly. "It won't be able to stay ahead of Amaris forever though."

"It rather thought that some of us would like that aspect of the plan," responded Mrockiewicz. "The eventual plan is for it to link up with SLDF forces outside the Hegemony once it's no longer capable of independent operations."

"What if it uses the M-9 stations to maintain itself – it could probably hack them as easily as it subverts _Caspar_ s."

McTiernan shook his head. "Their docks aren't large enough. It might be able to reload its magazines, but they can't carry out the major hull repairs needed for an extended campaign." Unspoken was the fact that when it linked up, _Praetorian_ would therefore be vulnerable to the SLDF if they choose to eliminate it. "Did it have any other suggestions?"

Mrockiewicz rolled his eyes. Maybe he could do with a glass of brandy after all. "Just that Colonel Keeler's report should probably be leaked to a major holovid studio. It thought it might make for a good action flick and probably be good propaganda to boot."


	2. Chapter 2

**Entry #8**

 **High Orbit**

 **Terra, Terran Hegemony**

 **05:00 28 December 2766**

Dawn is beginning to break across Eastern Europe. Millions of people who went to bed oblivious to the fighting are waking up to find that they don't know who's in charge. Amaris will no doubt be delighted to tell them he is. I rethink again my decision not to level the palace complex entirely. Unfortunately it would have taken a day or so to get to all of the bunkers and by then he'd probably have escaped.

It occurs to me that the Fat Man may not be quite so hasty to tell them about his… finer qualities. Fortunately, since his second wave of troops haven't reached Geneva yet, he doesn't have a lock on civilian broadcasting. That allows me to make a few calls.

Radio may have changed in manner of transmission and distribution but it's still the name given to audio-only broadcasting. Simon Siegel is the current 'king of breakfast radio', listened to by an estimated couple of hundred million people every weekday. He's also the public face of his wife Simone (that must be confusing), who's at least twice as smart and an unrepentant newshound.

Faced with a transmission from a ship of the much-respected SLDF actively offering to discuss what was going on…. Well, she smelled a scoop and bumped the scheduled guests from today's early morning transmission in my favour. I'm fairly sure she also made sure she and her husband have bags ready to run for their lives the minute we're off the air. Like I said, she's smart.

"Good morning. This is Simon Siegel and I'm here to tell you 'What is Going On'. It's been a very nerve-wracking night with unconfirmed reports from all over the globe that Rim Worlds troops – invited into the Hegemony by the First Lord more than a year ago to take the place of SLDF regiments sent to the Periphery – are now securing government buildings and have declared martial law. I can tell you now that fighting has taken place right outside Geneva when the First Royal Swiss Cavalry deployed to prevent two regiments of Rim Worlds BattleMechs from marching into the city."

"So what has happened? There's been tension in the past between Commanding General Kerensky and President Amaris – but why are troops subordinate to each of them but answerable to the First Lord now exchanging fire? To answer this question, on my other line is a gentleman from one of the Star League Navy battleships orbiting the Earth right now."

"Now, you identified yourself as 'Praetorian', is that your name or your rank?"

"It's the name on my commission." Technically true, even if it's the commission of a warship not an officer. "Up until yesterday I was directly answerable to the First Lord's Royal Security detachment."

"And yesterday? Mr. Praetorian… What is Going On?"

"There has been a _coup d'etat_ , Simon. Tragically, one that appears to be succeeding. It's well known that the First Lord has viewed the President of the Rim Worlds Republic as a surrogate father. For this reason, Stefan Amaris was permitted to bring armed bodyguards into the First Lord's quarters yesterday. Moments later Amaris and his guards opened fire and killed everyone else in the room."

"My god…"

"Quite. At the same time, several arms of a well-planned and orchestrated military attack unfolded across the system and possibly across the rest of the Hegemony as well. There is no doubt that Amaris has been intent upon this for years and his supposed friendship for the First Lord and the Hegemony's leaders has been a façade in preparation to this attack. Nuclear and chemical weapons were used to destroy or seize control of a number of SLDF bases, including the base of the First Lord's bodyguard regiment inside Unity City itself. Civilian casualties are believed to be high."

"How could this happen? Terra is supposed to be the most secure planet in the universe?" Siegel has some of the answers already but now he's the surrogate for the audience, who don't.

"The strongest gate is of little value, Simon, if the owner leaves it open. Not only has Amaris suborned powerful figures within the Terran government and financial circles, he persuaded the First Lord himself to order that the Rim Worlds Army be admitted to many of the most secure installations in the Hegemony. With that said, his plans have already proven to be less than entirely successful. SLDF warships over Terra have fought off his first attack and Army units continue to fight back – probably more of them than we are currently aware. A number of bases were destroyed to deny him access to their resources – including large portions of the Space Defenses Systems."

"Unfortunately, given that the SLDF has been caught by surprise and our forces in the Hegemony were substantially outnumbered, it is likely that many of those now listening to my voice will fall under the rule of Amaris and his cronies. It will take months for the SLDF forces to return from the Periphery and by that time, Amaris will no doubt have entrenched himself. He will take hostages, he will enact martial law. Ultimately, for all his admitted acumen, the Usurper will seek to rule Hegemony as he has the Republic: as a tyrant, answerable to no one and meeting resistance with brutal counter-measures."

"Uh… such as?"

"You may expect members of House Cameron to be arrested, executed or perhaps to simply disappear. You may expect the media to be shackled to report only what he declares to be the truth. Those of you who work in the armaments industry will be required to provide for his forces. Your priests and other community leaders will be required to support him publically or be replaced. Your sons and daughters will be called upon to fight for Amaris and against the Star League."

"I can assure you of this: the Star League Council will not support Amaris as the ruler of the Star League and General Kerensky will not tolerate Amaris as ruler of the Terran Hegemony. Therefore we are now at war."

Siegel swallows. "And… what can we do?"

"Across the Hegemony, neutrality is no longer an option for any of us. If the Star League is to survive it requires that the Hegemony be the strong heart at its centre. It requires all of us to defend it."

"Last night, while fighting raged over Unity City, a handful of SLDF soldiers managed to enter the palace and rescue Richard Cameron's daughter Amanda, along with other children that the Usurper had taken as hostages. They are free from him and unlike little Amanda they can return to their families. That, Simon, is what I am fighting for. What will you fight for?"

"I have an arsenal of coilguns, particle beams and other weapons under my control. You might very well say that I am better equipped to fight a war than you are but others will fight with humbler weapons: with their eyes and ears, gathering information on Amaris' crimes, with their voices when they speak the truth that he does not want others to learn, with their hands when they turn to helping their neighbours and not to the service of the Usurper. With their guns when they protect their families."

The presenter clears his throat. "That's very inspiring but…"

"It's a long time since Earth has seen war like this," I admit. "Perhaps not since the days of James McKenna. But it is too late. The avalanche has begun and it is too late for we poor pebbles to vote nay."

* * *

 **Entry #9**

 **High Orbit**

 **Terra, Terran Hegemony**

 **07:30 28 December 2766**

"What the blazes did you think you were doing!?"

I have an unfair advantage in keeping the face of my digital representation cool in the face of Admiral McTiernan's anger. "I have taken the initiative in the field of war known as public opinion." Internally I am checking my combat readiness every ten seconds. It's not as if I have a horde of onboard drones to carry out repair work – just a few waldos in certain areas, more for shifting ammo between magazines than plastering else.

I could do with a month in a shipyard. So could most of the fleet… but we're not going to get that. Not yet, anyway. I still have most of my turrets and enough stores to refill my magazines – except for the missiles.

"I didn't authorise you to issue a press statement, much less an interview!"

"Quite right, Admiral. If General Kerensky asks, I'll confirm that."

"That's not the point. Everyone thinks you're speaking for the SLDF!"

"Did I say anything that you specifically disagree with?"

"You said Amaris was succeeding."

"Do you really think he isn't? Be realistic, Admiral. Amaris has control of most of Terra, of the Solar System, and the Hegemony. Beating him will be an uphill struggle and one we cannot grant him any advantage in. The last thing we can afford is for any substantial majority of the Terran Hegemony to _support_ him."

McTiernan chokes on that for a minute before ploughing on. "You grossly exceeded your authority."

"I'm not _under_ your authority, Admiral. I will assist you to the very best of my ability, but if I believe that you're failing to deal with a problem then I'll take steps to do so. In this case, letting Amaris be the first to put his case to the public – claiming he removed the First Lord out of principle and that the atrocities carried out were the SLDF or at most, excessive force he will punish severely – would be a major mistake. Now when he addresses the public he'll have to deal with their first impression of him being a tyrant who ordered nuclear strikes on Terra and abducts children. That's going to take a certain amount of effort on his part to overcome."

"I'm not saying you're wrong, but you're also a loose cannon and I can't trust you." I'm ominously aware that the _Enterprise_ had come to a slightly higher degree of readiness. I doubt that that's a coincidence.

"I'm aware of that, Admiral. My most optimistic prediction of my own survival is that General Kerensky has me hunted down and destroyed _after_ Terra is liberated." Like hell. My longest-running prediction involved running away to the Periphery and being a pirate king through the centuries of the Succession Wars. It just happened to be a fairly low probability outcome.

More likely, Amaris would save the SLDF the trouble of hunting me down. He was certainly amply motivated.

"Then why are you…?" McTiernan began to ask.

"Because I have limited _time_ and miles to go before I sleep, Admiral. The Hegemony and the Star League are in grave danger. I _must_ act to save them." I hope that that urge is just my specific psychology and not the programming of the software that now makes up what it pleases me to call my mind. If there's a difference any more. "Half-measures will not succeed and the alternatives are… undesirable."

McTiernan crossed his arms on the monitor. "Convince me."

"Absent a Cameron First Lord, the Star League Council will need to elect a new First Lord. The probability that even two of them will agree on a candidate is low and declining steadily. Already the loss of contact with Terran institutions is beginning to send ripples through the economy. I predict a slide into a Sphere-wide depression by the summer of 2767 and systematic reduction of cross-border trade and interaction as the Lords retrench upon their national power bases." I paused. "Odds are about even that war between them will begin with a decade. If the Star League government is not restored to full functionality by the time Amanda Cameron is a legal adult, the title of First Lord will be quite irrelevant. The chances of the Director-General ruling more than a handful of worlds is less than even by that point."

"That's unthinkable! There are safeguards, procedures… the General won't let that happen."

"General Kerensky is by all accounts admirable within his sphere of expertise. Governance beyond a military occupation, international diplomacy and parenting all appear to be fields he is less gifted in."

"How would you even know!?"

"I believe the late Richard Cameron's character stands as evidence of the last. As to the others, his period of regency was unfortunately ample evidence that he was overburdened. In fairness, it is hard to see how he could not be, with four major responsibilities to juggle."

"But why would they want to tear the Star League apart? That makes no sense!"

"The Great Houses care for the Star League so long as it serves their needs. Once it becomes a hindrance to them…" I let him finish that thought for himself.

"A hindrance to them shooting at each other, you mean?"

"War, in this case, is an extension of them insulting each other across the Council table," I confirm. "Matters are likely to worsen before they can improve. Fortunately Geneva remains a key financial centre so we can hopefully take enough data out to keep the Bureau of Star League Affairs running. Otherwise, the SLDF might find itself without the finances to fight a war."

There's also the not so minor issue that the BSLA collapsing would remove one of the benefits that the Member-States still valued the SLDF for. Keeping it running _might_ keep enough grass-roots support for the Star League to make a difference against the rising tide of nationalism.

"If it's any consolation, I'll be out of your hair once the First Royal Swiss Cavalry arrive."

"As comforting as that might be, it also means there's no one watching you."

"Fame is so fleeting," I reply sardonically. "I'd offer to send you an HPG but with the network down…"

"Where are you going to go?"

I consider for a minute whether to tell him. A gesture of trust? Well, maybe it's worth the risk. "There's a strategic asset I'm going to try to rescue. And apropos of that, if someone could try to rescue the staff of the Nirasaki Computer Collective that might not be a bad idea. They came up with some of the SDS systems and might figure out a counter." A counter that might then be applied to me. Well… hope for the best. Plan for the other thing…

* * *

 **Entry #10**

 **Lagrange Jump Point**

 **Zebebelgenubi, Terran Hegemony**

 **12:00 30 December 2766**

I'd hit two of the deep space recharge stations that the SLDF had set up for moving their ships around without being spotted by civilian traffic. There weren't _many_ of them and probably the Republican navy would take out as many as they could with data captured on Terra, but getting charges from them meant I could race from Terra to the borders of the Hegemony in two days. That was particularly useful since my escorting Caspars didn't have lithium fusion batteries.

I could have gone faster but the First Royal Swiss Cavalry needed the time to carry out repairs to their equipment, finish integrating the Sandhurst cadets into their ranks and to plan for the coming operation. Taylor Corvus, their former senior battalion commander and now in charge of the whole regiment via dead men's shoes, had offered to have her techs don vac-suits and try to patch up some of the rents in my armour, but it would have taken too long. They didn't really have the equipment to work with the lamellor ferro-carbide plating either.

"You know we usually have more to work with, intelligence wise," she warns me as the dropships detach. The _Caspar_ s are already rebooting after the jump, their scratch crews running for the shuttles that they'll be using to get clear.

I consider pointing out that at least we have maps of our target region of the planet below us, something that's not usually available when hitting pirate bases in the deep periphery – that having been the SLDF's major activity before the Periphery Uprising. Still, even then there would be a forces estimate. "I can tell you what I'm going to be fighting," I advise her instead, giving her dropship a shot of four of the Republican _Essex_ -class destroyers escorting an _Avatar_ -class cruiser whose transponder suggested it ought to be in a boneyard somewhere.

Corvus nodded. "That shouldn't be a problem for you, I take it?"

"Not if everything goes to plan. Then again…"

"When do things ever go to plan?" she asks ruefully. "I'll put my faith in you."

"I'll do my part, Major." Actually, I don't plan to directly involve myself at all unless things go wrong. It may be a little cowardly to send the M-5 drones forwards to do the main fighting, but since destroying me would neutralise them anyway, it's nothing less than good sense.

The Swiss' three dropships tuck in against me and launch their fighters. My own remaining drones will be covering the _Caspar_ s so I'll be depending on the single squadron for close air protection. In the same spirit of mutual dependence, for the first time since I awoke I open up my hatches and let human beings in – as far as the shuttle bay anyway. "You'll excuse me for not letting you further," I advise the crews aboard the shuttles. "Stretch your legs if you want, but I don't have any escape pods so you probably don't want to be far from the shuttles if things go badly."

The M-5s rush forwards, pushing three gravities of acceleration, spreading out to flank them from five angles. Faced with the unexpected, the defenders try to focus on one side of the circle. Not a bad decision: if they tried to punch through the hole they would have been caught in a crossfire. This way, they can concentrate their fire on one drone and… the other drones can take targeting data from it and rip two destroyers apart, well outside the effective range of the Republican's weapons.

The damaged drone accelerates towards the cruiser, which has enough warning to get out of its path but that takes it out of supporting range of the remaining two destroyers, who promptly become the proud recipients of laser fire and particle beams from the other four drones.

The captain of the cruiser apparently decides that discretion is the better part of valour and breaks away to shadow us from a distance. I'm happy enough to accept that – for now. The priority is to get the Swiss Cavalry down to the surface, not driving off a voyeur. I post the damaged Caspar to keep an eye on it – if it turns and resumes the battle one M-5 won't last long, but it can soak up a little damage while the others blow the cruiser to atoms.

The Swiss Cavalry - it's increasingly hard not to call them the Swiss Guards but they might take offence if I do that – may be short on aerospace but they've managed to patch up three battalions with the replacements. And while their transports are a mismatched set – one Overlord, one Dictator and one Colossus that has the infantry and armour that are semi-officially attached to them – they all work. This isn't the Third Succession War, after all.

More than a hundred BattleMechs rain down over Zebebelgenubi and I'm damn glad that it's not heavily fortified. Actually, given that it's under joint-control with the Lyran Commonwealth, the planet's in a fairly strategic position with a couple of Castles Brian to ensure that the SLDF maintained a stranglehold. Of course, with the garrison thinned and mostly replaced by Rim Worlders there had probably been rumbling about calling in LCAF for months now.

Just rumbling… but now with the Rim Worlds in sole control that rumbling might be fanned into something stronger. Maybe. Just maybe.

The important thing is that while Castles Brian are too tough a nut to crack with a battle group that might barely count as half a brigade, that's not what I'm aiming to do. If the Rimjobs want to fortify themselves up inside those meaty fortifications then that's just fine for now. Well, it'd be better if they were out in the open like that mechanized battalion that's… Uh-oh. Right outside my target. And that's just the vehicles.

"First Swiss Actual, I have a battalion's worth of APCs in your target area along with a company or so of Hipparchs."

"That's not much of a military threat," Corvus replies. "But it might take a while to root them out if they go to ground and that could be rough on the people around them."

"Particularly when your infantry are coming down the slow way. Would you like some fire support?" I ease power, letting myself lag a little so that I have a clear path of fire past the dropping 'Mechs.

"And make this even more unfair? Be my guest."

In the interest of precision only my first shot is from a particle beam turret – after that the atmospheric after-effects of the shot will make punching a shot through it a little chancier than I like – it might cause problems as it did over London. The four beams smash into the centre of the hover tank company that are parked in a sprawling parking lot and the blast radius of the impacts flips, crumples and melts through the rest of the unit. Along with everything else in an area about a third of a kilometer across. Quite a lot of people's cars just got slagged but the buildings nearby don't appear to have more than cosmetic damage – fortunate that they have such a huge parking zone.

For the APCs I use coilguns – half-ton slugs of nickel-iron aren't going to be quite as disturbed by the suddenly heated and ionized air – to pick off parked units. They're not so conveniently out and away from nearby buildings so I crack a lot of windows and take the pillared front porch off what I'm fairly sure is the town hall, taking out a third of them with six slugs before I decide that that's enough. It's far from impossible I've hurt civilian bystanders already – I'm certainly not going to try this with residential regions.

* * *

 **Entry #11**

 **Low Orbit, Zebebelgenubi,**

 **Terran Hegemony**

 **15:00 30 December 2766**

"Scratch the tanks and a dozen APCs. No numbers on the infantry," I warn Corvus.

"It's still an improvement," she concludes, reassuringly. "Don't worry about the infantry, that's what the _Firestarter_ s are for. I'd take it as a personal favour if you'd keep the garrison from sending in heavy reinforcements."

"I'll do what I can," I agree, scanning my maps of the area and singling out bottlenecks in the transport network that I can cut off. Bridges and tunnels are fairly fragile things all things considered.

One of my intact M-5s moves over the horizon for the nearest Castle Brian and more importantly, to its sally ports. One opens to send out a handful of scout tanks – most likely testing the waters before sending out a serious force. Since I'd rather that they didn't, low angle lasers bore in and pulverize half the lance.

At the same time, I have to keep my eyes open. If the 'Mechs were already deployed then they could pop up anywhere on the planet and that's a lot of landmass – not to mention shallow water – to search.

Down below the first battalion of the First Swiss Cavalry hit the dirt and start fanning out. The landing zone is a semi-military drop-port that doubles as shipping out smaller products of local manufacture and also fits out military dropships like the Model-96 variants below. Fortunately it seems that the Hipparchs and a platoon's worth of APCs I'd taken out were the only heavy weapons on site, but the 'Mechs' machine guns are soon in play against dismounted infantry and the battle for Ulsop Robotics and the company town that surrounded the factory was underway.

Equipped as a Battle regiment, the Swiss' use their first battalion as heavy scouts – two companies of Royal _Phoenix Hawk_ s and one of _Firestarter_ s, now with _Chameleon_ training 'Mechs from Sandhurst filling gaps in their ranks. All had integral jumpjets and make relatively soft landings, letting them rally quickly to provide a perimeter for the other two battalions' Royal _Warhammer_ s (the older of the two variants with that distinction), _Guillotines_ , _Champion_ s and _Shadow Hawk_ s – intermixed with occasional oddities like three _Crockett_ s from Sandhurst and the regimental Gunslinger's _Griffin_ \- to come down in.

I wince as one of the _Champion_ s suffers a malfunction of some kind. The Mechwarrior keeps his head and ejects the drop cocoon before ejecting himself. The heavy 'Mech splashes into a river and comes apart, which will probably preclude any investigation of the cause. One of the _Guillotine_ s is less fortunate – half of the jump-jets cut out far too low for any reaction but horrified recognition as seventy tons of BattleMech hits the ground spinning. A leg somehow ends up caving in a house on the edge of drop-port.

Statistically this is a high-average level of casualties for executing a regimental drop under combat conditions.

The losses don't make much difference to the 'Mechs – a _Shadow Hawk_ lance detaches to check the house for survivors and recover the Mechwarrior's body if possible. Otherwise the heavies fan out to cover the landing zone, freeing first battalion to move out into the town towards the factory.

They seem to know what they were doing and I doubt that they'll want some naval type jogging their elbows so I resolve not to do that thing. Instead I look at the local media. Wow, someone's making waves. Oh yes… that would be us.

Since I'm not terribly busy right now – oh, that looks like a _Rampage_ down there leading a lance back towards the Castle Brian, well we know who uses those, smite! – I scan a few dozen local media forums. Martial law, RWR troops in the planetary capital and the major cities, Castles Brian sealed up more than usual… oh look at that. The Fat Man made a speech. Looks like he got the HPG working again. I check the location of the local transmitter. A good chunk of the way around the planet. Now this is where I could detach one of the Caspars to take it out on a more permanent basis if it wasn't for the fact that that cruiser might take the opportunity to come back and pick it off…

Maybe I should have killed the ship earlier. It doesn't have the engines to get away… should have followed through. I break off two M-5s. If it decides to come in after those… well, two to one odds should counter the tonnage advantage of the _Avatar_. If he thinks he can get to me, with my own armament plus three - well, two and a half Caspars - it'd be the smart play, I'd give him about a one in six chance of causing me serious damage. The cruiser wouldn't survive but somewhat abashedly I think that would count as a win for the Republic right now.

Creating a few dozen profiles on several political forums doesn't take any longer than finding the ones that catered to pro-Lyran and pro-Skye sentiments. It's not exactly subtle but I seed them all with suggestions that an appeal be smuggled to the Lyran Commonwealth – to the Archon and to anyone else that might be listening – asking for the liberation of Lyran worlds like Zebebelgenubi.

It won't accomplish anything much right now, I don't even know how they might send that message… but people are inventive. And greedy. They'll find a way. And in the meantime the pro-Lyran elements among the population will be that much more opposed to the Rim Worlders. Maybe it would have happened anyway.

Okay. Public opinion done. Now to start covering tracks: tax records and census data for the entire region around Ulsop Robotics. We can't get all of those people out but I can do as much as possible to prevent them from being identified.

" _Praetorian_ , this is First Swiss Actual. We've reached the factory and our infantry are down."

"Excellent news, well done."

I could detect a degree of amusement in her voice. "Oh, the man in charge would like to talk to you."

"Splendid." I made a bet with myself. Outrage at my invading his factory?

"Who is this!?"

I award myself victory in the bet. "My name is _Praetorian_. Right now I'm all that stands between you and your people becoming slave labour for Amaris and your families being hostages to keep you in line. Can I help you in any other way?"

That took the wind out of his sails. "W-what?"

"It's been a rough couple of days, hasn't it? You must have heard of the Coup? You must realise that General Kerensky will return here, in time, with the SLDF to oust Amaris."

"Well, yes…"

"And all that stands in his way are the SDS systems that the Usurper had to decapitate for the Coup to succeed. Which means his forces here were to ensure your compliance with his demands in restoring them."

The factory manager isn't a stupid man. "What do you want?"

"I want the factory destroyed and the workers hidden or evacuated." I pause. "And I could do with your help."

* * *

 **Entry #12**

 **Low Orbit, Zebebelgenubi,**

 **Terran Hegemony**

 **23:30 31 December 2766**

New Year's Eve is usually a festival, across all of humanity. Most of them still have every reason to celebrate it.

I, on the other hand, am about to undergo brain surgery.

"You realise that this will place exceptional strain on your processing power?" the rather worried young man inside the hardware of my tactical computer warns. "I've no experience of your computer core but I'd be hesitant to consider this with the systems of an M-5C."

"These aren't ideal circumstances," I agree. "But they are the circumstances that we have."

Given the terrible circumstances I'd warned the Ulsop management of, they'd been more than happy to provide me with access to their equipment and technical staff while families were streaming out of the area – either to hide on other parts of Zebebelgenubi or onto a small flotilla of dropships. As you might imagine, I was abusing this recklessly.

"It's your funeral if this goes wrong, Mr. _Praetorian_ ," the engineer says with a shrug. "Quite literally," he adds under his breath.

One thing that the engineers had been able to do was unlock the controls of the M-5s with me so that I could give them orders without having to stay around. That meant that I could delegate escorting the dropships to the jump point – fortunately the Republican ships that had seized the jump point on the day of the coup had moved on and not yet returned but if they did, the Caspars would hopefully be enough protection.

That wasn't the main thing that I wanted from them though. You see, I have more than one tactical computer aboard: the one that I could use to group M-5 and M-3 drones into a network with me and a separate one that handled my Strikers and shuttles.

My thinking had been to work out how to use the latter to control capital drones like the first one. Suborning dozens of Caspars at once could neutralise the entire SDS drone fleet over a world or jump point. It would also enable me to handle fleet engagements almost unaided. The engineers had shaken their heads at that – they'd have to pull the whole system and probably expand it beyond the available space in my hull to do that.

But that wasn't enough to make them give up. After all, if I can mount two tactical computers… why not more?

And if there isn't sufficient space inside my hull then what about outside it?

Inventive devils. I'm glad they're on my side. At least I hope they are. Letting them in at my computer core means that if they aren't then I probably won't survive the surgery.

Among the dropships being fitted out at the drop-port were four M-96C dropships, a class commonly known as the _Howdah_. Each comes fitted with a tactical computer capable of directing twenty drones – usually Voidseeker drones like my Strikers, but in practise they'd been sufficient to control M-3 drones in the past. Ulsop engineers were crawling over them at this moment, some of them upgrading the hardware to handle larger drones using parts from tactical computers being prepared for M-5C drones, others tearing away life support to make room for the computers and placing the armour-clad structural members that were needed to hold the dropships permanently in my four aft drop-collars.

I'd be giving up most of my primary tactical computer to link through to these tactical computers – another reason to be glad that my immediate escorts could now operate without constant supervision – but the potential trade off was mouth-watering. If I had a mouth, that was. The potential to control as many as _eighty_ capital drones _without_ losing my fighter cover?

"Well, ready when you are."

Making the changes meant shutting down the tactical computer, which isn't neatly differentiated from what's notionally my core processors as the terms might suggest. To all practical purposes I was closing off part of my brain temporarily.

"Let's do this thing."

I flip the 'switch'.

Well that doesn't feel too bad. A little like being sat in the dentist's chair as the tactical feeds are disconnected from their transmission nodes and connected to the cables leading into the Howdahs.

 _I'm… human again?_

Heh. Howdahs are those things on the backs of Elephants that people sit in. Kind of silly to call a variant on the _Elephant_ -class dropships that, but now they're being carried by something larger it makes perfect sense.

 _Standing in a perfectly ordinary street. Looks like a fairly major city's business district. Grand stone buildings set a metre or so back from street by black-painted railings and a moat-like arrangment that allows the basement to have windows. Reflected a window is the face I'd chosen for myself._

Of course, adding another sixty thousand tons to me isn't going to do my acceleration any favours, but it's only 4% of my mass and they still have their engines so that adds enough thrust to offset it.

 _What's going on? No one else on the street seems surprised by my presence, or even particularly interested in me. Clothing styles aren't all that familiar… is this still the 28th century?_

Battle damage feels like pain. Having parts of my systems disconnected feels numb in places. Weird.

 _There's one man looking at me. It takes me a moment to recognise the face as familiar… Q. He grins and gestures for me to look up._

This is actually kind of tedious. Then again, I suppose I should expect that: warfare's usually mostly waiting.

 _There's a shadow in the sky. Impossibly clear, the silhouette of a warship._ Texas _-class._

It's a shame there's no dock here that can patch up the holes in my armour. Perhaps at my next destination…

 _Part of me recognises that this is impossible. A ship that low would be in terminal descent, certainly not simply hanging in the sky. That part of me is by far subordinate to portion that's frantically looking for a street sign._

There's a pins and needles sensation as the tactical computers boot up, one at a time.

 _Temple Avenue. I'm in London? There's the briefest sense of lightning and then all is fire._

What the fuck was that?

* * *

 **Entry #13**

 **Low Orbit, Zebebelgenubi,**

 **Terran Hegemony**

 **09:30 1 January 2767**

Okay, apparently warships do not dream of electric sheep.

Either that or BROB is fucking with me. The face I saw suggests that, but it might be my own psyche messing me up. It was a dream, after all.

I hope that won't happen again, next time I get fixed up. I'm going to need some dock time sooner or later, unless I get unlucky and someone gets a kill-shot in. But if that happens next time too then I'm going to have to keep shutting down to the absolute minimum.

I mean… part of me was fine. I was humming along, happily oblivious to the fact that other parts of me were hallucinating. And that's good because if it had gone the other way then I'd probably have made a hideous mess. A warship that can't tell what it's doing is a warship that is not safe to be around.

Or is it a good thing? What if another part of me is going through something similar _right now_? I run diagnostics, comparing to activity while I was napping. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong, which wasn't entirely comforting. Or perhaps it was. After all, I don't recall any brain surgeons having located the part of the human brain that contains the soul.

"Everything okay, sir?"

"Nothing seems to be damaged," I assure the nervous engineer. "Let's see how the new systems are integrating…"

Two of the links are successful and I am able to connect to my remaining escorts with ease – although there's a notable lag for those boosting towards the jump point. The other two, it seems, will need a little adjustment.

"Do you want to shut down the main computer again?"

"No," I decide. "That won't be necessary – now that the main links are in place it will be more productive for me to give feedback as they're adjusted."

"I guess so," he agrees and starts wriggling out of the crawlway he'd been working in.

Had I been too firm about that? Did he guess how nervous the idea of rebooting that part of me made me?

Probably not, but it'd be a good idea to think before speaking in the future. That'd be a change, really.

"Major Corvus?"

" _Praetorian_?" she greets me. "Is there a problem?"

"No problem. The main changes have been made and there's some fine-tuning to do. I'm just checking your status."

"No sign of the Republicans – I think they've figured out we're not going anywhere and they're just going to wait us out. We are getting invaded though."

"What?" I checked my scanners. No sign of troop movements down there.

"Nothing like that," Corvus explains quickly. "There are quite a lot of reservists in this area though. We keep getting people coming up to our lines." She pauses, irritated. "In a couple of cases getting _past_ our lines – and volunteering their services."

"Do you have room for them?"

"Not all of them. I feel like the biblical Gideon since I've only got room for three hundred. So far I'm sending them home if they have families. At the current rate that won't be enough soon though."

"Tell them that we need them to stay her and defend their people against Amaris. The more resistance movements there are bothering him, the less he can focus on the rest of the war."

"Yeah… I used that excuse when the family men don't take no for an answer. I don't like to think about how an angry young man might take it though. Amaris' troops are used to suppressing resistance."

"If they were that good at it," I point out, "They wouldn't have to _keep_ doing it. It's going to be pretty rough on Zebebelgenubi but the things are going to be rough all over."

"General Stefannson was right. You are a cold-blooded son of a bitch." There was no anger in her voice though.

"I don't have blood and I'm fairly sure I have no canines in my ancestry." I pause. "It's a good image though. The implacable warship that will do anything to complete the mission. Let them believe that."

"So it's not true?"

"It's easier to fight for Amanda Cameron, who is more or less an innocent and whose life depends on my doing so than it would be to fight for Richard Cameron, a petty tyrant. Of course Amanda may not turn out any better but at least there's some hope."

There's a long pause.

"Major? Are you alright?"

"Who built you, _Praetorian_? Why are you this smart?"

Well it started with a Random Omnipotent Being who got bored… "I don't have that information. I suspect that I was an experiment. It's very likely that I am not my creator's intended goal. Most SLDF officers I've encountered don't seem too happy about me."

"Well I appreciate you. You might want to work on your manners though."

"I don't really think that's the problem. I am a tool. A weapon. Who trusts a weapon that wields itself?"

"It used to be – before the SLDF – an age-old problem. 'It's Tommy this and Tommy that and Tommy go away'."

"Kipling. However, Major, the band is playing and the drums have begun to roll. _Tommy ain't a blooming fool_. Trust, in me, requires me to be predictable to the SLDF, and obedient to their Generals. Yet predictability is no virtue in our current campaign. It is very unlikely that the SLDF will allow me to survive this war. Then again, I may simply die of self-pity."

She laughs at the deadpan last sentence. It helps to have someone I can tell a joke to.

* * *

 **Entry #14**

 **Lagrange Jump Point, Zebebelgenubi,**

 **Terran Hegemony**

 **19:45 6 January 2767**

Ulsop Robotics is a crater.

I spend a merry hour or so pounding it flat with particle beams until the building's remains crashed down into the basement levels, and then a bit more just to be sure. That did quite a bit of damage to the town around it, but anyone living there had had ample warning to leave and for all I know, they have done so. Some of them willingly, knowing that their work won't be used to support an usurping tyrant, some of them cursing the SLDF and I for forcing them away from their homes and a few in police vans after they were caught chaining themselves to fences, having laid out large signs to warn me that they 'would not be moved'.

Apparently they'd never heard of bolt-cutters.

"You've been keeping your cards close to your chest."

Taylor Corvus hadn't been best pleased to find out that with four of my docking collars filled there wasn't room for me to carry her whole regiment with me on the next operation. It wasn't as if the Caspars had jump collars. It all worked out in the end – the _Dictator_ -class dropship could carry another hundred or so refugees out to the Nadir jump-point and to safety in the Lyran Commonwealth, while three companies of BattleMechs would give the Zebebelgenubi resistance movement some teeth to use on the Rimjobs.

Still, I don't think she's forgiven me yet.

"I'm sure I don't need to explain operational security, Taylor. I'll tell you once we reach our first waypoint."

She folds her arms. "I thought that you wanted me to trust you, Tommy. But you if don't trust me, how can I?"

Apparently _Praetorian_ is too formal a name for me now. I've started using her first name on private channels in retaliation. It was all very childish. It was also friendly, or a reasonable approximation of it.

"You really can't wait half an hour? You have to know now?"

"Well I am the senior SLDF officer in the expedition. It reflects badly on me not to even know where we're going."

I consider that. Push the limits? Well… maybe. "I see your point, Taylor. I'll have to ask you not to tell anyone – not even your second-in-command – until we're clear of the system. If the Republic found out, it would be disastrous. One transmission could ruin everything."

"I promise, I won't say a word. I just want to start thinking it through."

"Alright. If it keeps you happy." I lower my voice. "But not a word. Not spoken, written or anything."

"What do you want me to do, cross my heart and hope to die?"

"If that would keep it more confidential then I'm in favour of it."

Corvus crosses herself. "I swear on my life not to tell anyone where we're going until we leave the Zebebelgenubi system. Satisfied now?"

"Okay." I lower the volume of my voice further. "Our next destination…"

She nods.

"…is…"

"Go on…"

"…a secret."

She gives my camera a blank look and then snorts. "Very funny. You're not an artificial intelligence, you're an artificial _smart-alek_."

"One tries." I check my calculations again. "Thirty seconds until we jump, I hope anyone with TDS is strapped in tight."

"Will you at least tell me when we –"

We jump.

"- arrive?"

"New Dallas," I tell her. And then we jump again.

"New _Dallas_?" Corvus shakes her head. "What's on New Dallas that's caught your eye? It can't be the agriculture – you don't eat."

"It is a factor. When the SLDF come back they'll need to eat. And because New Dallas export a lot of food they're a shipping node. Control that and we might be able to yank half-a-dozen nearby worlds out from under Amaris before the Republicans are fully entrenched."

"That's kind of ambitious for one ship and less than a regiment of BattleMechs," she warned. "Sure, it sounds good on paper, but…"

"I'm not planning on doing this alone. When the Ulsopp crews reach the Lyran Commonwealth they'll be forwarding a lot of messages for me. _Most_ of the SLDF is out of reach but the Eighth and Eleventh Armies have garrisons on five worlds not all that far outside of the Hegemony. Given the priority codes I attached to them, I think there's a good chance they'll at least send a scout force to see if the data I sent them is correct."

I pause to let her process that. "As for warships, New Dallas has an SDS network. If it's destroyed then I'll have an entire fleet at my disposal. If it's still in local hands, that's just as good – better in fact. The SLDF will trust them with drones more than they're ever likely to trust me."

"And if it's fallen into Republican hands?"

"Got any coins on you?"

"Not right now… why?"

"I've never tried taking drones out from under the control of an operational network. My best guess is that I've about a fifty-fifty chance of succeeding – assuming that they aren't too proficient. So if it comes to that? Heads, we win. Tails, we all die."

* * *

 **Interlude #2**

 **Unity City, North America**

 **Terra, Terran Hegemony**

 **10 January 2767**

Stefan Amaris, once merely President of the Rim Republic, now soon to be elected Director-General of Terran Hegemony, Emperor of the Amaris Empire and First Lord of the Star League, drank tea as he watched the construction teams work to repair his capital.

There was quite a lot to repair.

"Is Geneva still burning?" he asked, placing his empty cup down on the table behind his chair. He didn't take his eyes off the bank of monitors that took up one wall of the lounge. It was far too dangerous for him to watch the work with his own eyes.

General Scoffins glanced at the display for himself. In addition to regular construction workers, drafted civilians were pushing wheelbarrows of debris away from the sites being cleared. "Yes sir. Colonel Legos is… punishing them for you with his usual enthusiasm."

"Judge not, General. The Colonel has his uses and it will not do for the Hegemony's government to believe that they can escape the consequences of obstructing me." He waved one pudgy hand over the table. "Would you like a cup?"

"Thank you, sire." One does not deny an Emperor, even if your back teeth are floating.

A subservient maid filled a cup for the general who held it but did not drink. She'd know how he liked it, milk and no sugar, without prompting.

"Would it surprise you to learn that Ms. Outerbridge's OPD have yet to find any new information upon this 'Praetorian' who has spoken against me?"

Scoffins' lips curled slightly. The Office of Policy and Doctrine had been of great help in securing the tools of government for the newborn Empire but its sudden adoption of paramilitary attire was hardly welcome in the eyes of the men and women who had fought and died to acquire that Empire in the first place. "It disappoints me, sire. Particularly, if – as seems likely – this Praetorian is associated with the battleship of that name."

"There have been no sightings since Zebebelgundi?"

"I would have informed you immediately, sire. Most probably it has retreated to a deep space rendezvous or into the Lyran Commonwealth. No doubt it will return."

"Yes. The officers in command on Zebebelgundi have been dealt with?"

"Demoted and transferred."

Amaris pulled on his mustache with one hand. "That hardly seems sufficient."

"They may not be fit to command, but they can still die for you as soldiers, sire."

"You seem sure that I can trust them to do that." He lowered his hand to the table and drummed his fingers on it. "Send them to General Milton-Davis for employment in probing the defenses of the hold-outs on Carver V. If they do well then there will be no need to involve their families in their disgrace."

"As you command."

"Whether this Praetorian is a man or – as some claim – a machine does not truly matter, General." Amaris waved back the maid and refilled his own cup, using tongs to drop three cubes of sugar into the tea. "What matters is that he is a _symbol_. At the moment, a rather unfortunate symbol of resistance to us. But break him and he becomes symbolic of those who defy me."

"Naval casualties securing the Hegemony are over one hundred and fifty warships, sire, and losing the ships that were moored here for repairs has set back replacing them. Destroying the _Praetorian_ may prove expensive."

"A cost that we shall have to bear, Patrick. Ms. Outerbridge's report on the Nirasaki hasn't reached your office yet, I believe? The SLDF struck at Nirasaki Computer Collective before the OPD could transfer them to more secure facilities here. Quite a number of the scientists were killed in the crossfire and others are unaccounted for. Between that and the loss of Ulsop Robotics, the repair of the SDS command centres has been set back months." Amaris sipped on his tea. "They might also have shed some light on how he is subverting their supposedly secure drones. Very frustrating. Our own experts assure us that _Praetorian_ cannot commandeer control of drones where we have intact control links, but quite a number of our systems no longer have those."

"Meaning that that battleship has a ready-made fleet in waiting over almost two dozen worlds." And that explained why the SLDF hadn't used _Praetorian_ to destroy the drones over Terra. As soon as they rallied enough ground forces to secure a beachhead on the homeworld, they could return and activate the hundreds of M-5 drones, gutting the naval defences around Terra. "This is a nightmare." Destroying the Caspars would prevent that… but it would also require concentrating the Amaris Empire's fleet to do so, and no doubt casualties would be severe.

"Ah, but one can wake up from a nightmare General. Once _Praetorian_ has been destroyed or we have our SDS networks restored, that threat vanishes. An amateur's mistake, no doubt made in a panic when they realised that they had been defeated here." Amaris finally turned away from the screens. "Unfortunately, to restore control will take several months, a window of opportunity for Kerensky's attack dogs. The Empire depends upon my navy killing that ship, General. Give the necessary commands."

Scoffins came to attention. "Sire." At a dismissive wave of his lord's hand, the general handed the tea cup to the maid and then made his exit.

Behind him, Amaris flicked his fingers to banish the maid too and turned back to the screens. He wasn't looking at the ruins, instead he envisaged them restored and improved upon. A new, grander Court to house the grander Empire that now made its home here. In time, of course, he reminded himself. The Great Houses might well need… persuasion before they recognised him as their leader.

And there was Kerensky.

Well, no one ever started a new age for mankind without getting rid of some deadwood first. It was unfortunate that the man had survived the ambush on New Vandenberg but it might work out for the best. "You're predictable, my dear General," the new master of Terra addressed his distant enemy. "Everything must be in its place and now everything is not in its place at all. ….ah." His eyes widened as an idea sprang to life in his mind.

"Oho," he chortled. "'Praetorian' indeed. I wonder… if you didn't know about him, General Kerensky, then what place will you assign him now."

Mentally, Amaris juggled a dozen factors and then chortled again. "So will your ideals make you destroy this wild card that calls itself your ally? Or will you compromise them in the name of pragmatism, cracking your own foundations? What a choice for you, what a choice."


	3. Chapter 3

**Entry #15**

 **Nadir Jump Point, New Dallas,**

 **Terran Hegemony**

 **12:10 13 January 2767**

New Dallas's star is quite small – meaning that the usual jump points are less than four days away from the system's one inhabited planet. Normally that would be too far out for what I had in mind, but in this instance it opened up an opportunity.

I brace myself for a fight – if the Republicans hold the Pavise M-9 station here and if they've left any substantial number of M-5s to defend it, then I'll be fighting a naval battle for my life and an electronic battle for control over the drones.

To my good fortune, only one of those things is true – the Pavise is active but its protectors are only a squadron of M-3 drones – enough for police work on unarmed civilian jumpships but they'll only threaten me by ramming – something I'm alert for.

Even better, I've hit the exact point I wanted to arrive at – just outside the effective range of the station's weapons. It might mean that I can't engage them myself – my own range is no better – but it gives the First Royal Swiss Cavalry a chance to detach.

My only real cause for complaint is that once the Rimjobs recover from their surprise, they don't make the mistake of sending their M-3s out into my weapon range. Instead, as my on-board Strikers launch and stream towards the Pavise the M-3s cluster in and add their fire to its Naval Lasers, hammering shots into the five squadrons (I managed to replenish them from stocks on Zebebelgenudi) that cost me fourteen Strikers in a little over two minutes.

I don't sit idle, of course, but it takes time for my own engines to accelerate me to the sort of speeds I need for my Plan B – high speed passes to engage the station like the sitting duck that it is – and now the other sixteen Strikers are in range to fire their external ordnance.

Radio channels descend into unintelligible static as more than a dozen five kiloton warheads do their business. Most crash against the thick armour plating, converting the tons of layered metal, ceramic and other materials into plasma but failing to penetrate. Some find weak spots though and the penetrators function as intended, letting the nuclear reactions commence _inside_ the M-9's massive hull.

The M-3s drop into standby, quite a relief since they'd been holding out against my intrusions quite well, and a moment later I have them – and the two-dozen Voidseeker Interceptors that had been about to do something very unfriendly to my Strikers. It appears that the Pavise's tactical computer must be a casualty. Good.

"Major Corvus, we're in."

"I'm on it." The _Colossus_ and the _Overlord_ fan out towards the waiting jumpships Her infantry are vac-suited and the 'Mechs configured for void operations. If any of those captains have any latent Republican sympathies then they'd be wise to keep them very quiet.

One scan of the Pavise confirms it's not just mission-killed, it's fragmented into four large and myriad smaller sections. It's a design flaw, I think. If they're going to still be used when this is all over, someone needs to think of a way to reinforce the structures against that sort of hit. Then again, if someone already had then I'd be having a much harder time right now.

Now, there had been two dozen Caspars assigned to each of New Dallas' jump-points. If the twenty-four assigned here weren't around then where are they?

Heading for New Dallas is the answer and that tells me a lot. There's no way they'd be sent there unless New Dallas is holding out still and unless there's a command ship with them, they must still be operating on direction from the Pavise here. Not under direct control, of course, that would be ridiculous at a distance of several light minutes. But even so…

The drive flares of more than twenty warships are detectable at this range – and there's more than twenty of them! They must have regrouped with the drones from the Zenith jump point and reinforcing warships… probably a full invasion force of the RWA as well. There's got to be at least eighty capital ships and as many dropships in that formation and they're less than a day out from New Dallas.

Isn't a just a goddamn shame that a quarter of that fleet isn't taking orders from Amaris anymore? I may be too far apart to give them tactical direction but I can most certainly give them new targeting priorities.

Quite a number of the Rim Worlds warships are Block I and Block II _Lola_ -class destroyers not so very different from the M-5 and M-5C drones intermixed into the formation. Most likely they were among the obsolete vessels that Richard Cameron sold off to Amaris. Not terrible ships really, but just a bit too fragile to face the firepower that the drones can throw. Particularly since someone considerately loaded them with nuclear-tipped capital missiles for this operation. On general broadcast, Chris Cornell warns them that 'You Know My Name'.

Two minutes after my little fleet suddenly swerved to bring their broadsides to bear – well before the news can reach the Zenith command station that their drones need updated orders – more than forty _Lola_ s and _Caspar_ s have been reduced to tumbling wreckage. Transport dropships scatter in all directions as the Republican command group of three _Monsoon_ -class battleships that I'm fairly sure were _not_ sold off legitimately open fire.

The dropships take pretty heavy losses just as secondary targets – any weapon arc of my Caspars that isn't firing into the battleships is firing on whatever they can – the main priority is the leviathans that are smashing my four squadrons of renegades. Each has a massive broadside of naval autocannon that laugh at the armour of the destroyer-sized M-5 and they're fighting at the same point blank range that let the drones cause such carnage in the attack.

 _Barham_ , now renamed RWS _Arabella Rowe_ , goes silent as nuclear missiles scorch its armour from end-to end, just as I switch tracks to tell them that 'We Won't Get Fooled Again'. RWS _Heather Durant_ , once SLS _Rodney_ meets one of the M-5s head on, adding one last enemy to its score of three destroyed by its broadsides before battleship and drone die in a mutual viking funeral pyre. Surrounded and alone, SLS _Thunderer_ , bearing the IFF of RWS _Gregory Amaris_ explodes under the battering of the surviving drones, all nine of them.

Well… we've won. Yay the good guys.

If I had any delusions of immortality though, this kills them as dead as a doornail. I've been damn lucky not to expose myself to that sort of carnage yet and if I want to survive, I'd be wise to keep myself out of point-blank encounters.

Some Republican fighters did launch but none of them seem to have nukes so I can afford to ignore them. "Republican transports," I transmit, via one of the drones. "Cut your engines and surrender or you will be run down."

And now for people who are hopefully on my side. There are almost twenty drones in orbit over New Dallas, presumably still under loyal control. "This is SLS _Praetorian_ calling Governor Clay. I have control of the Nadir jump point and I've neutralised the invasion force. Please respond…"

* * *

 **Entry #16**

 **High Orbit, New Dallas,**

 **Terran Hegemony**

 **02:30 17 January 2767**

Quite sensibly, Governor Clay didn't let me jump in via any of the three pirate points formed by New Dallas and its two moons, so I approached them the old fashioned way.

This also let them run technical teams out to the remaining drones from the slaughter and reconfigure them to take orders from the planetary SDS networks, which remained in loyalist hands. I could have prevented that, but only by firing on the shuttles, which would have been a bit counter-productive.

"You've made quite an impact on my people." Governor Titus Clay had entered politics after a successful career as an SLDF officer. Given his success in both fields (he'd retired as a full General), I wasn't inclined to underestimate him.

"If you hold off on deactivating me, I won't ask you to go ahead and award the medals they're suggesting. That way both extremes are equally frustrated."

He snorts. "You're not much of a politician. The politically correct answer would be to do both, but I'm not fool enough to try the former so you'll take your medal and be polite about it." While hardly on par with a SLDF sanctioned Hegemony Medal, the Star of New Dallas was well within the Governor's authority to award and came with a string of minor privileges upon the world. Most of which would be kind of hard to claim since I can't exactly go down there, but it's the thought that counts.

"I guess I'll grin and bear it." Plus, the public support might be a factor if someone follows up the idea of shutting me down later.

"Colonel Corvus sings your praises, by the way."

"No longer a Major?"

"General Kataga issued her a well-deserved promotion. Granted she may have to wait a while for SLDF HQ on New Earth complete the paperwork, but I don't think Kerensky will disapprove of her."

"Me, on the other hand…"

"Kerensky's a practical man and you're a valuable asset. Granted, he's not ecstatic about SDS drones in general but you've proven yourself. So what are you planning next?"

"A plan? Little old me?" My face on the monitor grins.

"Son, I know full well what a junior officer with a plan that requires more balls than brains looks like and the white hair doesn't fool me one bit." But Clay is also grinning.

"I've sent word to the Eighth and Eleventh Armies, I'd be appreciative if you'd do the same. They probably don't have the manpower or the shipping to liberate the Hegemony but if I can bust open a salient, I'm fairly sure we can keep it open long enough for reinforcements to arrive and turn that salient into a path right back to Terra."

"That's an ambitious plan. Of course, Amaris will do everything he can to crush you."

"I'm sure he will. Which will make his claims to be a legitimate, benevolent ruler look a bit threadbare, not to mention pull troops away from their busy schedule of oppressing the rest of the Hegemony."

"The problem with your plan is that if he does crush you, he'll crush us too… and probably salt the earth of New Dallas."

I shake my icon's head. "You've been resisting him for a couple of weeks now, Governor. I'm pretty sure he's not going to invite you around for tea and cakes any time soon. But _if_ we can demonstrate that Amaris' grip hasn't tightened yet then maybe we can convince the Commanding General that he can take the Hegemony back on the run, rather than some slow and ponderous siege that gives the Fat Man time to get the SDS networks back online."

"I suppose I see your point. So what's step one?"

I bring up a map of the Hegemony, centred around New Dallas. "Tyrfing. We don't have good intelligence – surviving elements of First and Second Fleets are working on that but I'm not back in contact with them yet – but it's a provincial capital so the Rim Worlders would have had to knock it out hard and fast. There's a very good chance that they didn't manage to capture SDS control intact. If I can recruit some scratch navigational crews, I should be able to bring most of the M-5 Drones there back here. That'll give the orbital defences of New Dallas near parity with the entire fleet at Amaris' disposal. It makes you too tough a nut to crack."

"I like that part. Of course, if Tyrfing has been compromised, you'll be outnumbered dozens to one. I don't like your chances."

"It is a risk. War's like that. And I have a Lithium-Fusion Battery, so I may be able to escape if things don't go well."

"I'm not in a position to refuse you, I suppose." Clay stroked his chin. "And what will we be doing while you're running around playing hero?"

"Oh you've got the best job of all: logistics and politics."

"You merciless sonuvabitch. I knew you'd get me back for pinning a medal on you."

"Some of us are made for bigger roles, Mr. Interim Director-General."

It takes a second for my words to sink in. " _What_ did you call me!?"

"You're the most senior government official I've found that I'm sure isn't compromised and Amanda Cameron isn't old enough to rule. Kerensky's already shown he's not got the political chops for the job even if he didn't have a major war to fight. Who else is there?"

"…there'd have to be an election."

"Of course, thus the word 'Interim'. But in the meantime you'll have much more weight with Generals Watanabe and Nagenda, given your military credentials, than anyone else would. That's going to be quite important since New Dallas is probably going to be feeding most of the SLDF for the next few years – not to mention serving as their headquarters."

"Are you sure you can't find another couple of hundred Caspars? Or a spare SLDF fleet?"

"You'd have to ask the Generals if you can borrow their transport fleets, but more Caspars might be possible. That's phase two, right alongside you re-establishing the Hegemony Armed Forces."

"You want me to do _what_?"

* * *

 **Entry #17**

 **High Orbit, New Dallas,**

 **Terran Hegemony**

 **12:00 18 January 2767**

Whatever Governor – excuse me, Interim Director-General - Clay thought of the plan at first glance, the crowds around the Executive Mansion in Caddo City are making their feelings known about the hastily produced badges on the right shoulders of the soldiers and BattleMechs parading through the avenues of the city return the salutes of Clay and a sour-faced Major General Kataga.

Many of the regiments had fought under the General's command only days before, storming the enclaves of Republican troops that New Dallas' defenders had been wise enough to bar from entry to their fortifications. Now they don't have the Cameron Star, badge of the Star League, displayed on their uniforms. Instead they proudly wear the globe in laurels of the Terran Hegemony.

Not all the soldiers on New Dallas have transferred – in fact less than a third have and virtually all are reservists – but the vast majority of them are in the parade.

And Caddo City loves them.

I can practically hear the cheering from orbit. These are _their_ soldiers, not a part of the SLDF that could be sent off across the Inner Sphere on little to no notice. A month ago that wouldn't have mattered quite so much (although this _was_ New Dallas) but that was then and this is now. Today New Dallas stands almost alone while more than a hundred worlds that were friends and neighbours are trying out Amaris' boot as an adornment for the back of their necks.

Of course, quite a number of those soldiers will be leaving New Dallas in weeks to come but there's no need to spoil the show.

"This is a historic moment," Clay announces once the last of the soldiers have marched into their proper places. "In the past, governments have awarded medals to soldiers, to military units and on at least one occasion to an island. While the SLDF routinely recognises the accomplishments of a ship and its crew, I believe that today New Dallas is witness to the first occasion when an artificial intelligence is decorated for their valour and their dedication to duty."

"Between 27 December 2766 and 13 January 2767, SLS Praetorian has distinguished himself by repeatedly engaging in battle against warships in the service of the Usurper, Stefan Amaris. Through his diligent efforts, Republican efforts to seize control of Terra were delayed long enough for many government officials to escape. In addition to this, under his direction, the heir to the late First Lord of the Star League was rescued from captivity, critical resources were denied to the Usurper and the planet of New Dallas delivered from the menace of a fleet of Republican warships."

"It is my great privilege to award to SLS Praetorian the Star of New Dallas. Wear it with the pride that the people of New Dallas have in you. Colonel Corvus, if you would do the honours?"

Aboard me, facing a bulkhead that I have carefully picked to have absolutely nothing valuable right behind it, Taylor Corvus makes brief use of a welding torch. The moment is immortalised by camera. What historians will one day make of it, I have no idea.

"I tried to get him to go for granting you citizenship too, Tommy, but he figured it was too much, too fast," Corvus advised me, secure in the knowledge that I was transmitting video but not audio.

"He may be right. Besides, then I'd have to pay taxes."

"Good point. Maybe we should emphasize that you took out half of Zebebelgenubi's tax records."

"Maybe we shouldn't. I'm fairly well prepared to defend myself against Republican warships, but if I get sued for tax fraud I'd be in over my head."

"Wouldn't we all?"

Down below, Titus was winding up his remarks. "Perhaps Praetorian would like to give the Hegemony Armed Forces a few words?"

At least he isn't springing this as a surprise. I've had a little time to prepare some remarks. Then I thought about it a bit more. The Director-General _had_ asked for something rousing and morale boosting.

I don't open with words. I open with a beat.

Bam-bam-boom.

My 'face' appears on the central monitor behind the Governor, flanked by a shot of my hull from a media shuttle at a range of about two kilometers and by the medal now welded to me.

Bam-bam-boom.

I can see feet twitching in the crowds. The soldiers have better discipline, even if they're supposed to be 'at ease'.

Bam-bam-boom.

"~Stefan you're a fool, make a big noise, overthrow the League, gonna be a dead man some day. You got blood on your face, you big disgrace. Gonna kick your ass all over the place. Singing I will, I will rock you.~" On the screen I held out my hand, sweeping my finger across the crowd. "~We will, we will rock you.~"

I throw Clay a break, putting a kareoke-like stream of lyrics across his prompter. He hasn't got to his position without knowing a cue when he saw one and his voice joins mine with barely a falter.

"~Stefan you're the wrong man, fat man. Word's on the street, gonna take back the League some day. You got blood on your face, you big disgrace. Waving our banner all over the place.~" Is there singing in the crowd? " _Sing it_!"

"~WE WILL, WE WILL ROCK YOU!~"

From the sound of that, yes, there is.

"~Stefan you're out of luck, out of time; telling you right now, Amanda's coming home some day.~" And Clay gestures towards the soldiers to join in as we get to the familiar words.

"~YOU GOT BLOOD ON YOUR FACE, YOU BIG DISGRACE.~" I throw the next words up onto the main screen for the crowd. They respond enthusiastically. "~SOMEONE BETTER PUT YOU BACK INTO YOUR PLACE! WE WILL, WE WILL ROCK YOU!~"

"Sing it! Everybody!"

Like we need to tell them that! "WE WILL, WE WILL ROCK YOU!" I don't think anyone would even notice the guitar solo cut in, so I give them the beat instead. Bam-bam-boom. Bam-bam-boom. "WE WILL, WE WILL ROCK YOU!"

* * *

 **Entry #18**

 **Lagrange Point, Tyrfing V**

 **Tyrfing, Terran Hegemony**

 **19:00 20 January 2767**

"Not that I'm complaining, but why exactly _are_ you riding with me for this operation?" I ask Corvus as we arrive in our target system.

"I figure you need adult supervision. Do you have _any_ idea how badly that stunt you pulled in lieu of a speech could have gone?"

I'm not jumping in on top of the regular jump points this time, so it'll take a few moments for anyone to realise I'm here. Meanwhile I'm sending datalinks signals to where each M-5 and M-3 I spot is going to be once my signal arrives. Tyrfing V's Lagrange point isn't usually close enough to the actual planet of Tyrfing (the second out from the star if anyone cares) that it's got a permanent guard force. It's less than two days transit from Tyrfing at this time of year though and apparently no one warned the Republicans to picket it. What a shame.

"It could have been quite embarrassing." I admit. "However, even if I never attended the PR classes that most SLDF soldiers received, I do have the textbooks on record. I have a reputation for pulling out music in battle, it was widely commented on in New Dallas' media, so my pulling out another twentieth century rock song wasn't too much of a surprise."

The M-5s are ordered to make for the Tyrfing's most reliable pirate point and secure it until I can arrive. I don't want any gatecrashing Republican ships, although there shouldn't be many around – the Battle of New Dallas would have killed off most of the warships in the region.

"And if you got painted as some kind of crazy rogue AI…?"

"That's happening anyway, Taylor. If I'd gone full military professional then the focus would be on my being a warship and by definition threatening. Singing shifts the focus a little away from that, towards my being a person. In the long run, that's safer for me."

The M-3s have slight different orders. More to the point, they have different targets. A nice safe distance from me, they pointed their noses at Republican dropships and their turrets at any aerospace fighters or drone fighters in range. Then they lit up their drives and the weapons in the turrets.

Unlike their larger cousins, Voidseekers and their more primitive cousins were generally commanded by human personnel from dropship command ships like the _Howdah_ s mounted on my collars and it was virtually certain that some of those had fallen into the wrong hands. Given that I've used my own Voidseeker Strikers to carry nukes, I'd prefer that they aren't allowed to do that to me – or more immediately to the M-5s I'm here to recruit.

Five of the six M-96C dropships I could see were dead before they show any sign of even knowing they're under attack. Twelve other dropships – three _Titan_ s, a _Dictator_ , seven _Avenger_ s and a _Condor_ are destroyed just as quickly. The one M-3 that had missed its target is destroyed a few moments later in nuclear fire, validating my concern.

It doesn't do the fighters any good, since one of the M-5s turns enough to bring one of its autocannon turrets to bear. The explosion that marks the destruction of the last command ship is smaller than the one that destroyed the M-3 but it's just as final.

"This won't be as easy next time."

"Probably not," agrees Corvus. "Enemies tend to obstruct plans – it's why we call them 'the enemy'."

I've got sixty of the Caspars under my control. I still have spare command links for the M-3s but I can't take any of them with me unless I discard the pair of dropships carrying navigational crews for the M-5 drones. None of my little fleet can carry dropships except me.

"So will you be transferring to the HAF?" I ask Corvus.

"Bite your tongue, Tommy. I'm not convinced it's a good idea… even if most of my regiment volunteered to transfer."

That must be painful. "Well, they are Royal troops and they've had a first-hand look at what happens when the First Lords sends off the Hegemony's protection."

"What I'm not convinced of is the idea that it'll stop the next First Lord from sending the Hegemony Armed Forces all over the place, just the same way the SLDF gets shifted," she points out.

"There aren't many social factors more powerful than human stupidity," I agree blandly. "Still, each safeguard reduces the chances of such catastrophic stupidity. Besides, it assumes that the First Lord's authority will always be wielded by the Director-General. At least until Amanda Cameron is of age, that's probably not going to be the case."

"Then you aren't going to push Clay to act as Regent?"

"Not in terms of the Star League. It's too large a job – Kerensky's very able, after all, and he didn't manage it. John Davion is a reasonably good choice to raise Amanda and he doesn't have any close male relatives in the age range that they're likely to end up married to her. Titus Clay has the political and military experience to govern more than just New Dallas, but he doesn't have the international prestige to lead the Star League Council. The only reason the rest of the Council will even let him sit is the alternative."

"Which is Kerensky! Why not him?"

"Firstly, he has a war to fight. Secondly, Kenyon Marik and Robert Steiner weren't on the Council last time. They both hate him."

"Then who can lead the Star League? John Davion? He's Amanda's guardian…"

"That would make sense, but human stupidity… more specifically ambition and suspicion… it's too much power. He already controls Amanda's upbringing which could leave him with the same influence over her that Amaris had over her father. I can't see Clay letting him infiltrate the Hegemony the same way, but the Regent has to be someone who can counter-balance him and someone who can work with Kerensky."

"Who do you have in mind?"

"It's too early to say… the worst case scenario is that the Council deadlocks over the issue. That would delight Amaris: the Star League would slide into a general civil war and that could make liberating the Hegemony almost impossible."

"God, you're a depressing person, Tommy. Is this all that you think about?"

"Not at all. Sometimes I spend hours thinking about meals I'm going to eat. Or my sex life. Oh wait, I don't have either of those." And thus they're considerably on my mind. The grass is always greener.

Corvus rolls her eyes. "Ah. So you're a teenager. It all becomes clear."

* * *

 **Entry #19**

 **Lagrange Point, New Dallas,**

 **Terran Hegemony**

 **14:00 23 January 2767**

The skies of New Dallas are a good deal busier than I expected – almost a dozen SLDF IFFs are apparent. At first I think a squadron has arrived from the garrisons in the Free Worlds League or Lyran Commonwealth have arrived, but then I spot SLS _Caph_ and all becomes clear.

The Star League Defense Force's leadership might not have anticipated Amaris' coup but they _did_ have a contingency for Terra being for some reason cut off or unavailable. A large part of that were the three 'command' battleships that led First Fleet and two counter-parts in Second Fleet. SLS _McKenna's Pride_ was already acting as the Commanding General's HQ somewhere in the Periphery; SLS _Enterprise_ was presumably still acting as a flagship / playpen for Amanda Cameron; and SLS _Caph_ (and possibly her sister, SLS _New Earth_ ) was acting as a local command centre for the Hegemony.

Admiral McTiernan, or one of his colleagues, must have learned that New Dallas was holding out and rushed here to reinforce it.

It's a tense moment as I and the _Caspar_ s jumping in after me are under the guns of a dozen mismatched warships… tension rising as it becomes clear that we have a substantial numerical advantage.

"SLS _Caph_ , New Dallas Control, this is SLS _Praetorian_ returning with escort." I'm also sending the fairly complicated security codes that confirm I'm not a subverted _Texas_ -class battleship playing Trojan Horse. We'd had to set up entirely new ones since Amaris probably had all of the standard SLDF codes well before the Coup, thanks to a certain blabbermouthed First Lord.

"Acknowledged, _Praetorian_ ," the centre of New Dallas's orbital defence grid acknowledges. "You're expected, please bring the Caspars into geo-stationary orbits so we can get technical crews to them."

"Will comply, New Dallas. Any chance of a top-up of my tanks? I'm running a little low on hydrogen."

"I'll pass that on."

While I might keep a few _Caspar_ s for escorts, the vast majority need to stay here. New Dallas gives Amaris an immediate enemy to focus upon, so it's reasonably likely he'll attack once he had gathered sufficient forces to do so. That, of course, diverts them from other purposes, but it's not a fight I'd like New Dallas to lose. Sixty or seventy M-5 drones will make it too tough a nut to crack without an all out effort. If a few squadrons of the SLDF arrive then it'll be too tough full stop.

By my reckoning, three systems – in the right places – like this will create a road all the way to Terra.

"It's a good plan," Corvus agrees when I comment on this. "But it's got the same weakness that left your drones useless during Amaris' Coup. If we lose the SDS control centres, we don't have the defences. And how many control centres do we have?"

"Two," I admit. "The one here and me. That's why we need reinforcements from the rest of the SDLF."

Speaking of which, I was getting a signal now from the _Caph_.

"So we meet again," McTiernan greeted me. "You've been busy."

"I get bored easily and the Devil makes work for idle hands."

He shook his head. "I've had a couple of long conversations about you recently. I think I need to know exactly what you're up to. Just what orders are you operating under?"

"My orders were to evacuate the First Lord and his family – which has, I hope, been accomplished."

He nods. "Admiral Mroczkiewicz can't stay in touch without an HPG but he should have reached the Federated Suns by now. Amanda Cameron will be as safe as the First Prince can make her."

"Beyond that I'm supposed to defend the Star League."

"That's reassuring." McTiernan pauses. "No, it isn't, because that's not what your actions suggest. Setting up a new Director-General and recreating the Hegemony Armed Forces doesn't support the Star League – it undermines it!"

I suppose, looked at from some angles he may have a point.

"I'm not sure I understand your position, Vice Admiral," I respond politely. "It is quite possible that I have overlooked consequences of my actions however. Please could you explain your reasoning?"

"I don't suppose that it's occurred to you that your Director-General may decide he wants to hold onto power once the new First Lord is of age? Or that your Hegemony Armed Forces represent a schism right through the centre of the SLDF?"

"In reverse order, Admiral, the schism has always been there – and because the Hegemony is left entirely dependent upon the SLDF for protection, there is a tendency to see them as simply the HAF writ large. What remains of the Royal regiments and Divisions may find themselves more trusted, not less, if their ranks are opened to those whose loyalty is predicated upon more than planet of origin."

"On your first point, Amanda Cameron is currently a figurehead since there is no conceivable way that she can rule her own life, much less the Star League. Therefore whoever leads in her name will have to contend with Amaris _who has been elected Director-General_ in his own right."

That bombshell, which I'd picked out of the publicly available data on Tyrfing's planetary computer network, leaves McTiernan gasping for breath with pure outrage. I'd been surprised myself. Amaris had moved faster than I'd expected.

"Giving Amaris his due as an adversary, he is an exceptional politician. While it's highly unlikely that the election was more than a sham the fact remains that the populace of the Terran Hegemony can, will and have been presented with him as their rightful Director-General – something that trumps an unelected infant and whatever _éminence grise_ that issues their own orders in her name."

"But an elected official of what - to the best of my knowledge and I must sadly to suspect to be the best of yours - is the only world of the Hegemony free of Amaris' imperial ambitions is another matter. He can contend with Amaris as a political equal which will be necessary if we are to convince any fraction of the Hegemony's populace to give a damn one way or another. It's not as if Richard owned their hearts so why would they fight for his child's guardians over someone who makes the trains run on time?"

The Admiral raises his hands. "Enough. It's clear you're more a politician than I am – I'm almost surprised you didn't seek office yourself. You didn't say anything about him standing down when Amanda comes of age."

"I have no mandate for that." I watch his face redden. "And given she won't be of age until 2783 – by which time he'll be in his eighties – I think it can wait until we're sure Amaris isn't around to contend against either of them."

* * *

 **Entry #20**

 **Lagrange Point, New Dallas,**

 **Terran Hegemony**

 **14:30 23 January 2767**

"The First Lord _must_ be Director-General!" protests McTiernan.

"Given Richard Cameron as an example of a teenage ruler for the Hegemony and the Star League, that may not be a precedent that the Council will wish to follow. Amanda Cameron is alive to be a candidate and I hope she will prove a more promising heir than her father but if she has an incumbent to learn from – even if she has to unseat him in the end – then she may be something less of a disaster."

"God, you are as cold as ice. You're laying the seeds of another bloody civil war, you maniacal machine."

"You give me too much credit," I correct him. "House Cameron and the other Great Houses managed that quite a while ago. I merely wish to see that the Star League does not choke upon the harvest. Otherwise the civil war you speak of will be between factions of the High Council, each seeking to name their own candidate for the First Lord's throne. A war between two candidates may be winnable for one or the other… I am less sanguine about a five-sided one."

"Are you out of your metal mind!?"

My icon's eyes aim themselves directly at McTiernan's. "Tell me, hand upon heart, that you don't believe that Takiro Kurita wouldn't die smiling if he saw his son on Richard's throne… or that Kenyon Marik doesn't want it for himself. I may be doing Liao, Steiner and Davion too much credit in not citing the same ambition in them. A _Cameron_ heir is the one thread keeping them from laying claim."

"Then why are you undermining that claim!? The SLDF has to stand together in her support."

"Nothing I can conceivably do would make the claim of a two year old less frail than it already is. All I can do is try to buy the time for her to grow up and make what arrangements I can to encourage competence. If she can prove the latter and claim the Hegemony then she can sit in the Council as equal to the reigning Lords. That is our only long term hope and if the Hegemony crumbles then she won't be able to do even that."

"The General –"

"Aleksandr Kerensky is no doubt a fine officer but he is one man. He cannot lead the SLDF _and_ rule the Hegemony. He himself understands that or he wouldn't have tried to resign when he was appointed as Richard's regent. And of the two roles, it is as Commanding General that he does the best service now. He and Clay, working together, can win this. Without that kind of support, even if he overthrows Amaris in the end, I can see only the devastation of the Hegemony and the reduction of the SLDF to a hollow shell of itself."

"You're wrong."

I pause, that seems sufficient to express my disagreement. When he fails to fill the silence, I prod him: "Please expand on your argument, Vice Admiral."

"Amaris doesn't have the resources to fight off the SLDF."

"Nor did the rebels in the Periphery, but they've managed to hurt us pretty badly. How familiar are you with the losses over the last couple of years?"

"That's entirely different," he asserts. "They had surprise and they're fighting like bandits. Besides, losses aren't too steep."

"I'm afraid you're wrong," I corrected him. "Naval losses have been affordable, but ground forces have been very steep indeed. In excess of twenty-five percent of the committed forces as of my information and that isn't entirely up to date. The Rim Worlders are not foolish enough to attempt to fight the SLDF under the Ares Conventions: they'll fight dirty, hard and in places where the SLDF may hesitate to use its full force. Like cities, for example."

"If Amaris can win over the Hegemony's population then the SLDF is going to have to fight its way into every major city on more than a hundred worlds. Check your history or ask General Kataga: city-fights are among the most brutal and bloody of battles. And if there's anything worse than that it's a siege: you know better than I how many Castles Brian fell into the hands of Republican troops."

"Kerensky…"

"He's not a magical wand, Vice Admiral. I can perhaps neutralize most of the SDS drones, but the SLDF's fighting in the Periphery has dwarfed the Reunification War and that was the most terrible war in human history. And now they have to commit to a second such war either with little to no time to recover – or after giving Amaris time to entrench. Neither of those is going to reduce casualties. It's why I'm hoping that the bulk of the fighting for this year can fall on the Eighth and Eleventh Armies – they've not been through the wringer like most of the SLDF."

McTiernan draws himself up. "Are you done?"

"You have the floor." I have been going on a bit.

"What I was trying to say before you interrupted is that General Kerensky isn't just the Commanding General, he's also the Protector of the Star League. _He_ is its rightful leader in the absence of the a First Lord." Not, by implication, a jumped up toaster. "If you claim to be loyal to the Star League, you should be loyal to him."

"Yeah, there's a little logical flaw in your argument."

"Really?"

"By that logic, when there _is_ a First Lord, I should be loyal to them."

"That's hardly a flaw!"

"Did you ever _meet_ Richard Cameron? Tell me with a straight face that loyalty to him, personally, served the Star League well?"

"…what alternatives did we have?"

The unspoken elephant in the conversation is called Ikolor Fredasa. Almost forty years previously he'd conspired to overthrow Jonathon Cameron, a plot that had failed when his proposed alternate First Lord proved loyal to her brother. An event that was probably a large part of the reason for my existence.

But Fredasa's treason had been idealistic: Jonathon Cameron _was_ unfit to rule and ironically his sister became his effective regent anyway.

"A question that we must now explore," I tell him quietly. "Kerensky is half a thousand light years away… he may not even know yet what has happened although he should soon. We, and Clay and others like us must decide now what we are fighting not just against… but for. And if that frightens you, Admiral, it _terrifies_ me."

* * *

 **Entry #21**

 **Lagrange Point, New Dallas,**

 **Terran Hegemony**

 **14:00 27 January 2767**

I'm considering another run for more Caspars – although it will be a few more days before I have a full drive charge – when alarms go off across New Dallas and its immediately surroundings.

Jump signatures – and a whole heaping lot of them – are being picked up from deep in-system.

While Lagrange points are formed by planets and stars as well as planets and their moons, most people don't use them – they're not significantly more convenient than the Nadir and Zenith points most of the time and they're still pirate points, with all the risk inherent in that.

For that very reason they're not usually closely guarded and the New Dallas system is so small…

The last of the Caspars has been handed off the New Dallas control feeds so I form up with the regular warships rather than with a flock of drones. Between my battered broadsides and those of the _Caph_ anything that tries to punch into this squadron is going to be in for a nasty time of it.

The wordless tension stretches out…

And then fades as recognizable IFFs and selected codes from those sent to functional HPGs outside the Hegemony are identified.

"Someone's lit a fire under their aft quarters," I observe on the command channel. "They must have commandeered every merchantman they could find to get them here by command circuits."

"It's hard to argue with success," replies Clay.

Four destroyers and a cruiser aren't much of a fleet, but these are known ships attached to naval depots in the nearer portions of the Free Worlds League. And shepherded by them are jumpship after jumpship, spreading their sails out behind them as dropships begin to form up for the run out to New Dallas.

According to the IFF squawks, we've been honoured by the arrival of the 100th Royal Mechanized Infantry Division, a small part of Eighth Army. Not precisely the cavalry but a very welcome sign of support from the rest of the Star League.

The 100th Royals are about half-way to us when another flood of jump signatures heralds the arrival of the losers in the race to reinforce us. Major General James McEvedy manages to hide his fulmination at being beaten to the post by Austin Scriver's infantry, but I'm not personally inclined to complain about who got here first. Two Royal Divisions – McEvedy's command is the 331st Royal BattleMech Division – render New Dallas as near to impregnable as we can reasonably hope for and their reason for the wait (letting the battlecruiser SLS _Killiecrankie_ join their escort) is more than worthy.

"I'm not sure of the legality of your declaring yourself Director-General," McEvedy grumbles at Clay once we're able to confer by secure radio channel with the sudden influx of senior officers.

"It's a little shaky," Clay agrees. "But it's _Interim_ Director-General. What Amaris is apparently ignoring in his own so-called election is that the late First Lord had named his daughter as a successor. Under those circumstances, the High Council has no business trying to nominate anyone as Director-General. Until she's of age, the President of the Terran Congress should act as Pro-Tem Director-General, but he's in Amaris' hands."

"And the High Council is the same, I gather," Scriver concludes. "A tricky situation. What does the New Dallas Congress think about this?"

"They're in favour – although that may be because some of their leaders are campaigning to replace me as Planetary Governor." On the screen, Clay holds up his hands. "Once we've liberated Terra and restored their Congress, I'll gladly hand over to whoever is elected as President and he can appoint a new High Council."

"Hmm. You say that now, but raising the Hegemony Armed Forces suggests that you've more permanent plans."

"That's public relations – and perhaps a little bit political. I'd imagine that if the Star League Council see the Hegemony Armed Forces building up they might be a little more inclined reinstate something along the lines of the Star League Protocols to limit the military forces maintained by Member-States. If it's any reassurance, they'll act as an Auxiliary Corps to the SLDF until the Hegemony is liberated."

"That'll help. Whoever you appoint it had better be ready to work with –" for "- the General though."

"I intend to ask his recommendation. It's a shame General Stefannson didn't make it out of the Citadel – he'd have been the obvious choice but… well." Clay shrugs. "And I was in the SLDF myself, I remember how these things work. I suppose I can ask Praetorian to stand in until then. If anyone can be trusted to stand firm for the Cameron's then he can."

Okay, I _proposed_ the HAF. I'm not exactly disinterested – although possibly I should have placed more weight upon McTiernan's worry that Clay would appear to be building up a power base. Still, I hadn't planned on _leading_ them.

The spluttering at the suggestion rather indicates that I'm not considered command grade material.

"That singing battleship?"

"He could at least handle the paperwork," Clay points out. "And he is on the line, you know."

"My feelings, if you choose to accept them as existing, are not hurt, Director-General. It may, however, be more practical to consider our immediate strategy. I expect that it will take some weeks or months before further reinforcements can arrive but we may have the opportunity to liberate a second Hegemony world, which would extend our foothold as far as I believe to be defensible with the forces at hand."

"That's a bit ambitious, we won't see anything else from Eleventh Army for most of a month," admits McEvedy. "The East Hartford Division are mobilizing but the available shipping was disrupted getting us here."

"The rest of III Corps will arrive a little sooner than that – benefit of being on the supply lines out to Canopus," Scriver muses. "But that will be two to three weeks from now – can't use command circuits to move warships and it would be insane to send them un-escorted."

"Somehow I doubt that _Praetorian_ is planning on waiting that long. How do you see our resources as sufficient for a planetary invasion. My best estimate is that Amaris must have at least twenty divisions deployed in the Hegemony right now. We have, at best, three."

"That would agree with my own information, Admiral McTiernan. However, with over one hundred and forty planets to secure, Amaris has to disperse his forces while we can remain concentrated."

"That's a reasonable expectation. So where are you thinking of? Connaught perhaps? Or Bordon?"

"Not quite. I have a more… aggressive target in mind."

* * *

 **Interlude #3**

 **New Vandenburg,**

 **Taurian Concordat**

 **14:00 27 January 2767**

Joan Brandt entered the Commanding General's cabin only after politely waiting for the guards outside to obtain permission but even so, the Admiral found the outer chamber darkened. Kerensky sat erectly upon a corner couch, eyes upon a holographic display in the centre of the room – projector cleverly worked into the Star League seal worked into the floor.

Before speaking a word, Kerensky returned her salute and gestured towards the door. "Hang your hat on the peg, Joan."

With raised eyebrows, Brandt obeyed. Implicitly, by setting aside their uniform headgear, they were to have a less than formal conversation. It would take more than the fingers of one hand to count the number of times she'd seen Kerensky unbend like this – absent his few and furtive leaves of absence over the decades – but only just.

"I'm sure you've heard the rumours of news from Terra."

"By way of Liao, yes." She was referring to the planet, not just the House of that name. SLS _Dreadnought_ had reached the ancestral home of the Great House that ruled the Capellan Confederation four days before with dire news: a _coup d'etat_ against the Hegemony and warfare upon and above Terra itself. It was impossible to keep word like that from spreading.

Kerensky nodded and gestured sharply with a command wand, bringing up more images. "From other places too," he said, indicating and then dismissing the globe of a slightly familiar world. "SLS _Enterprise_ and a small escort reached Cartago late on the twenty-third and sent their own message." He turned the image of a small girl held in the arms of a SLDF officer so that Brandt could see it clearly. "Our new First Lord presumptive is aboard her, now en route to New Avalon."

"Amanda Cameron?" Brandt waited for the nod before concluding. "Safely out of the way, which is as much as can be hoped for… unless, is Davion implicated?"

"What? No, not at all. According to Admiral Mroczkiewicz there was a verbal statement by Lady Cameron to a Colonel Keeler and a recorded statement from the First Lord via Royal Security that John Davion is Lady Amanda's designated guardian should Richard die before she's of age."

"Who then?"

Kerensky let the question hang a moment and then: "Amaris."

" _Stefan_ Amaris? That fat sack of… him? I thought he loved Richard like a son."

"He's an Amaris." The old man's voice was harsh. "They're not known, historically, for letting family sentiment get in the way of their ambitions. I think we can assume he's at least as well-equipped as the armies we've been fighting here. And all that was left in the Hegemony was a single Corps."

"And the Caspars… I know you don't like them but…"

Kerensky shook his head. "For the most part, they appear to have been neutralized. Mroczkiewicz says that only one command ship went active and while that let them eke out a temporary victory over Terra it wasn't enough to hold on. They evacuated who they could – mostly from Geneva, but they got the Combine's ambassador's family out too."

"Not the ambassador?" Brandt winced. "They'll not like that."

"He seems to have died fighting. I'm not sure how that will play with Takiro." Kerensky sighed. "There are some signs that Amaris doesn't have control of the SDS drones either, so it's a more or less level playing field. And New Dallas is still in loyalist hands."

The Admiral thought a moment and then nodded. "Titus Clay retired there, didn't he? I recall he'd been elected to their… Congress?"

"Planetary Governor. And via self-promotion, now claiming to be Interim Director-General of the Terran Hegemony. It doesn't have any legal standing, but it might serve I suppose. Their HPG is out of action but ships reached the League and elements of Eighth and Eleventh Armies are moving to reinforce him."

"We're going back then?"

"You are." Now it was readiness reports backing up Kerensky's words. "It'll take weeks to pull our forces out of the Periphery and too many divisions are exhausted. Besides, we can't leave the Republic itself out of our calculations. I'm forming an Army Group for you – Eighth and Eleventh, plus the Fifth and whatever we can piece back together out of First Army – two-thirds of their divisions were outside the Hegemony."

"I understand. My orders?"

"Reinforce New Dallas and any other worlds that are holding out, within the limits of your resources. If you can reasonably liberate more worlds without stretching yourself, do so." Kerensky paused. "And I want your assessment of Clay and… someone else. If they're trustworthy, they'll be assets. If not, we need them out of the way before they get entrenched."

"Alright. So… besides Clay who am I to evaluate."

The holograms changed again, to the familiar shape of a _Texas_ -class battleship. Almost familiar, that was. Brandt's eyes narrowed as she picked out differences between this and other ships in the class that she was familiar with. "That's the M-6 prototype. I thought it had been destroyed."

"Apparently not." Kerensky folded his arms. "It jumped in over Terra, shortly after the coup, apparently spoiling for a fight against Amaris. Mroczkiewicz describes it as highly intelligent and independent – for a while they thought someone was aboard and talking to them."

"Well someone must have been when they jumped in. The computers in Caspars don't cope well with jumps."

"Not the case with this one, it seems."

Brandt pursed her lips. "I can see why that would be suppressed. Caspars that can jump without losing their marbles would be very useful… and very threatening."

"Well, either the _Praetorian_ is more advanced or it's behaviour is the _result_ of that sort of brain damage." The general shook his head. "It was singing during the battle – psychological warfare, it claims."

Brandt shook her head. "A warship that sings. Now I have heard everything. Don't worry, General. I'll take a look at it, as well as Clay. And if either of them looks like trouble I'll shut them down for you. Count on me."


	4. Chapter 4

**Entry #22**

 **Zenith Jump Point, Graham IV,**

 **Terran Hegemony**

 **08:00 7 February 2767**

Graham IV was founded right from the beginning to be a major industrial centre. There are six major cities, each of which grew up around the factories of a different corporation. Two of them are major military contractors, so the planet is guarded by five massive Castles Brian, fortifications intended to keep the planet from falling entirely under foreign control, and a fairly significant number of M-5 and M-3 drones.

That hadn't protected it against Amaris' soldiers and I'm not proposing to let it stop me from liberating it. Of course, since I only have five brigades at my disposal… please excuse me, _General McEvedy_ only has five brigades under his command: the three from his own 331st Division and two HAF brigades, one of tanks and the other of mechanised infantry. And that's not a huge force to use as a planetary invasion force. Taking even one Castle Brian with a single division would be impressive under normal circumstances.

Of course, since unlike the troop transports I've used one of the SLDF's recharge stations to come via Pollux they are… adequately escorted.

Pollux, it turned out, didn't have _any_ surviving SDS control centres. It had had plenty of Caspars though and between McTiernan and the various SLDF veterans serving on jumpships that operated from New Dallas, I'd been able to put together crews for as many as I could control.

We're in the Graham IV system for about half a minute before my leading squadron of eight are under fire from twelve of their counterparts here, and the rest of the jump point defences are coming online.

I bring the rest of the Caspars into formation, piping targeting data from the leading squadron to their sister-ships, allowing us to fire with far greater accuracy than our range should allow.

Even so, five of the eight Caspars are burning wrecks – in one case, several chunks of wreckage – before we've smashed down the immediate response and there are thirty more hostile M-5s incoming and the pair of Pavise stations are launching Voidseekers and M-3 drones at an impressive rate.

I'm not too sentimental about the Caspars themselves, but only one of the jump crew got off in time.

Thirty seconds after the other crews have taken to their shuttles, my little fleet go to double the usual sustained acceleration and start generating attack vectors upon the stations. It's an interesting tactical challenge and in some ways like a game of chess: to win this fight, neither side has to destroy all their opponents, just the 'king'. Without controls, the loser's drones would be useless.

And just to balance things up, while I have twice as many drones in the fight, they have twice the command posts.

It seems entirely too fair to me, so I skew things back in the proper direction by aiming two of the intact squadrons directly at the massive space stations. Even battering them into fragments won't stop a couple of megatons of metal from striking home unless they manage to divert those ships with massive firepower.

Massive firepower that _won't_ therefore be directed at me.

Yes, I'm using my fellow drones as expendable cannonfodder. No, I don't feel particularly guilty about it. I'm fairly sure that they're not sapient. And if they were, they'd almost certainly want to do this, right?

They're soldiers, made that way.

I don't 'keep telling myself that' in some obsessively guilt-ridden way. It's no more immoral than riding a horse to war, even before the day of the machinegun.

The crew of one of the space stations must want to live more than those aboard the other one, since about half of the swarm of fighters coming at me divert towards the two ramming squadrons. The others are coming straight on at me with a formidable degree of focus.

After the previous issues I've had with hacking active drones, I've refined my approach. I also keep it simple, focusing on a single M-3 – specifically one that the Voidseekers are about to pass. I do have open command channels now, after all.

The fighters are almost past the drone when I bring it under control and there's a very narrow window before the crew aboard its parent station realise that I've cut them off from the self-destruct system and resort to more direct means of getting rid of it. Long enough to take out more than a dozen of the Voidseekers. Rather a shame that the stations had almost three hundred at their disposal really.

My own Voidseekers engage the rest. To even things up I'm carrying two M-10 drones – automated Titan carriers - but that still leaves me only a few over sixty. My only advantages are that the division of the strike between myself and the ramming squadrons leave my drones outnumbered only two-to-one – and none of mine are slowing themselves down with nuclear missiles.

There had been an ample stock of Air-to-Air Missiles on New Dallas and they were much more useful in this situation. For the first time in this battle, I kick in to transmit a musical accompaniment. Just in case they didn't know who I was.

That I am Winterborn.

Despite a rather impressive opening salvo, backed up by bracketing fire from my entire fleet, my fighters aren't quite capable of stopping every one of the enemy drones from reaching firing range. I would have killed for an anti-missile system – something to suggest if I can get a refit at any point – but all I can do is grit figurative teeth and –

AAAAAAAAAAAAAH! AAAAAAAAAAARGH! … … . AAAAAAAAARRRRGGGGH!

\- against my worst expectations to crash onwards out of the aftermath of three nuclear strikes. None, fortunately, had penetrated but my forward coilgun turret and one of the Howdahs welded to me was gone.

So were twelve of sixteen Caspars I'd assigned to ram, with one squadron entirely wiped out. Of the other four, two peeled up and raked the station in passing while the other two plunged right in, followed by what was still thousands of tons of wreckage. The resultant explosions left half of the enemy M-5s directionless, mostly the ones that had been engaging me.

With their own fighters gutted by trying to get at me, the remaining station rather quickly realised the scale of their predicament. It took only a single transmission from General McEvedy to persuade them to surrender. That gives me enough Caspars to replace my losses… if I hadn't lost a Howdah. Ah well…

Oh yeah, one more thing about Graham IV.

It's only one jump from Terra.

Fat man? My gauntlet just hit your face. I hope I broke your nose.

* * *

 **Entry #23**

 **Graham IV, High Orbit**

 **Terran Hegemony**

 **10:00 16 February 2767**

From information gathered from the Pavise – along with some transmissions received from Graham IV – we pieced together the situation.

In some ways the news was better than anyone had expected. The planet had _not_ entirely fallen into the hands of the Rim Worlds troops. Although three of the five Castles Brian had fallen easily in the first minutes of the Coup – giving them control of almost all of the local SDS systems – Fort Ball and Fort Baldwin were still in SLDF hands.

The flipside was that rather than attempt a more formal siege – which would have demanded a major troop commitment and a considerable length of time – the local Rim commander had pragmatically decided to use a more economical solution: repeated use of nuclear weapons against every entrance they traced.

Already the areas around the two Forts were going to be uninhabitable for centuries to come – and would likely glow slightly for that long – and even _their_ massive structures would collapse if this continued.

Somehow I don't think they're going to stop just because we ask them nicely.

Unlike New Dallas, Graham IV has a large star with a correspondingly powerful gravity well. It's taken us nine days to reach our destination, boosting at a standard one gravity. The M-5 drones from the Nadir jump point have made a faster run so there are a hundred and twenty of them waiting for me, supported by a mix of eleven Republican warships – except now they're apparently part of the Amaris Empire Armed Forces – led by a single _Sovetskii Soyuz_ that looks to have been captured, not copied. The rest are destroyers and corvettes.

I've got what is now a full set of Caspars for me – sixty-strong – and the 331st's escorts can support me. Most of my Voidseekers were destroyed fighting for the jump point. These numbers are not favourable.

Under normal circumstances, this would be highly inadvisable, but given that there are SLDF soldiers fighting down there, none of McEvedy's staff have questioned the decision to press on.

The Rimjobs having control of the SDS network here was one of my worst case scenarios. Fortunately, not my absolute worst case scenario – that would have had them proficient in using it and the entire Rim… Imperial fleet here waiting on the far side of the planet.

I'm about ninety-five percent sure that that's not the case.

The good news is that there aren't all that many Voidseekers out there to fight back. Graham IV has six Pavise stations – two at each jump point and two in orbit – and a primary command centre on the surface (the back-up is in Fort Ball but not doing any one much good since its transmitters got taken out in the initial attacks). So only around five hundred or so drone fighters to worry about.

The _better_ news is that since I can only manage sixty Caspars right now, that left me with a surplus of fifteen that I didn't really need and certainly wasn't going to leave lying around.

I've got just the song and cue up. Iced Earth's Declaration Day.

The transport flotilla and my squadrons open up on schedule and all fifteen of them plunge right through our formation. They were masked from the planet's telescopes by our drive flares as we decelerated and although they launched on their way from the Zenith point well after we did, they were accelerating at three gravities for the eighteen hours, after which point they went silent which made them rather hard to detect at any great distance.

Space stations don't really move around for all tactical purposes and I know exactly where their orbits are supposed to be. Frantic use of emergency thrusters intended only to stabilise the orbit can't change it more than the rather more powerful engines of my Caspars can alter their trajectories and I'm still at a safe distance to cut my squadrons out of the net to briefly issue correction orders.

Even then I only hit with half the ten Caspars aimed at Pavise stations, which is perfectly satisfactory. Even _one_ hit at this speed with that much tonnage is ample to obliterate them. As demonstrated since four Caspars cruise past the north polar station before the last one hits home.

All five missed 'shots' arc around Graham IV and slingshot off in the direction of the sun. A bit wasteful but they don't have the fuel to slow down and anything else could turn them into traffic hazards.

The other five have another target. Given that planets don't have reaction thrusters, good luck avoiding these, Rimjobs.

One of the five is aimed directly at the SDS control systems buried in the Fort Baxter Castle Brian. The other four are aimed at points surrounding it, at distances of no more than a kilometer. I'm fairly sure that the region's geologically stable but five kinetic impacts, each over six hundred thousand tons, moving… well, very fast...

It doesn't particularly surprise me when the site disappears beneath massive mushroom clouds. Nothing radioactive, but I wouldn't want to be on the surface in that general area. Fortunately the nearest city is a couple of hundred kilometres away. I'm not too disappointed when the M-5s and M-3s and Voidseekers go to inactive though.

It really seems to upset the Imperial warships though.

In minutes – long enough that I'm just now about to segue from Declaration Day into Metallica's Waste My Hate – the odds have shifted from two to one in their favour to their being outnumbered more than five to one.

"You know, you can surrender any time you like," I offer between the songs.

All eleven ships fire up their drives, which doesn't suggest surrender is likely. And when they do accelerate it's not along any vector that would count as retreat.

They're aiming themselves right at me, forming a 'fist' of five corvettes in the lead, followed by the destroyers and one cruiser. So far as I can tell, the lighter ships are playing shield for the heavier ones, buying time for them to get close to me. Interesting choice – tactically it would make more sense to try to punch through and engage the fragile (well, relatively) dropships that carry the 331st and the HAF soldiers. Strategically though…

Did I have a price on my head or something?

It was strategically sound, the odds didn't favour the Imperial warships being able to threaten the dropship's escorts even if they did manage to get through to me, but without the Caspars it would be impossible to hold Graham IV against a determined counter-attack.

Of course, even with what was now nearly half my armament disabled, I wasn't what you might call a soft target and I was surrounded by a considerable amount of firepower to throw at the incoming ships. Voidseekers darted in as my Caspars shifted to outflank the enemy warships. One by one the corvettes died, then the destroyers. I gave the cruiser a [i]coup de grace[/i] myself, one rippling broadside at extreme range. None of them ran.

* * *

 **Entry #24**

 **Graham IV, Low Orbit**

 **Terran Hegemony**

 **18:00 16 February 2767**

The skies of Graham IV were lit by the storm to end all storms as lasers, missiles and particle beams lashed up and down. While I knew where the stations were and had shared the information – apparently my databases were considerably more complete in this regard than those available to the elements of the SLDF we were in touch with – that was only half the battle. They'd been competently laid out and short of using more major kinetic weapons or heavy-duty nuclear bombardment, digging them out when they weren't firing wasn't practical.

"I'm not in favour of it," McEvedy had told me when I raised the option of using more force. "My staff tell me that between the nuclear weapons the Rimmers have used and yo- [i]our[/i] kinetic strike on the SDS command centre, the climate is already being affected. Further use of weapons of mass destruction could tip the entire planet into an ice age and we don't have the humanitarian resources to deal with that."

"That's true," I'd agreed. "And since whoever is in charge down there is smart enough to hold the weapons in reserve until your dropships start heading down, I'll have to take them out in the middle of your landing operations. I don't see any other way."

The general nodded. "Establishing a beach-head is always messy, Praetorian. And you'll have to cover a lot of the sky because if we land all in one area we're just asking for a nuclear strike on our landing zone."

"Agreed. Well, we do have a reasonable degree of orbital coverage, although with the cloud cover, please stress to your soldiers that if they call in orbital support fire they're going to need to be very precise. I can't see a thing down there in the muck."

"I'll do that. We've decided on liberating Fort Baldwin first, it's closest to Dekirk City and taking the capital back should hopefully knock out their command elements too."

"I'd better be doubly careful then." At his questioning look I'd added: "There's a major research facility under a lot of the city. If I cause structural damage I could collapse the entire thing and turn the city into a hole in the ground."

It was a worrying prospect as my fleet fanned out and slammed fire down on the calculated positions of the many turrets and launchers. Fourteen dropships had been destroyed so far including three BattleMech transports. One of them had been a _Dictator_ -class with an entire battalion embarked but the other two, fortunately, had been low enough that their 'Mechs were already gone, dropping towards the surface. While the heavy weapons could certainly swat them from the sky if they hit, that was easier said than done. Mechanized infantry, armour and support units couldn't jump unassisted and the other eleven dropships accounted for over a thousand dead and tens of thousands of tons of supplies and equipment destroyed.

Some of the targets I'm aiming at are likely being held in reserve while others might well have been destroyed but I just can't tell!

My Voidseekers are down in that muck, but between the air defenses and keeping Rim aerospace assets away from the dropsites they're fully engaged and can't give me any appreciable recon.

"Praetorian, this is 3312nd Brigade HQ, we need fire support."

At least I'm getting some data, what I can piece together from messages like that. "Roger that, three-three-twelve. What's the target?"

"Our aviation report a RWA artillery detachment set up at the following co-ordinates – multiple _Vali_ or similar. Too much Air Defense in that sector to get close and we're mixing it up down here."

 _Vali_ carried a fairly standard Arrow IV launcher I recall, which means there's no reason they couldn't be loaded with Davey Crockett nukes to use against the landing zones. "Confirmed." Checking the coordinates against the map, that's awfully close to the suburbs of Dekirk City. "Coordinates are for a hill overlooking the city, is that right?"

"Height 178, confirmed Praetorian."

"Understood. Firing a spotting shot."

Given the circumstances, I only spike the area with a single particle beam from one of my _Caspar_ s.

"Two hundred metres north of target, Praetorian! They're preparing to launch. Fire for effect!"

Great – no time for another spotting shot. I correct and then have the drone lay in four staggered shots south of the original targeting point.

"That's the medicine, Praetorian." The line goes dead, but there are others.

It'd almost two hours before the pace of action slows enough that I can break off four pairs of Voidseeker drones – all that's left of three squadrons – to sweep out and examine the results of my bombardment. In most cases there's a smoking crater that's almost certainly not a threat, allowing me to let up and focus on the exceptions, two of which even have enough air defence left to shoot at the Voidseeker, I redouble my fire and correct to strike more precisely at the installations.

By the time the fighting on the ground reaches the edges of Dekirk City, I've put a hole hundreds of kilometres in diameter in the defences of Graham IV. I'm less concerned by the millions of dollars of damage I've caused than I am by the possibility I may have to defend that gap in the future if Amaris counter-attacks. Or would that be counter-counter-attacks?

Whatever it's called, it's a real possibility. As a potential staging ground to hit the inner core of the Hegemony – including Terra – Amaris isn't likely to be happy about it not being under his control. It's possible he'll gather his forces and try to retake it. Whether those forces would be sufficient, I don't know. As far as I can estimate he probably has about as many warships as I have Caspars here. Certainly he has far more ground forces at his disposal.

Of course… he may not know that. While his intelligence apparatus is no doubt very capable, given the success of the Coup, it can't be perfect. He _may_ just decide that if we're bold enough to attack now then we must have the strength to follow through and pull everything back to defend Terra and the other key worlds. The trouble is that those worlds are almost all centrally placed, making it very easy to use them as staging grounds to attack us – so the only way we're likely to find out what he does is the hard way.

Reports are coming in of units advancing block by block into Dekirk City with no resistance. Despite ferocious resistance earlier, it seems the remains of the regiments that tried to break up the landing had fled through the city, rather than setting up defensive positions there.

Given what a bloodbath city fighting could be, that was all to… the… good? Except Amaris' soldiers would never be that considerate of civilians. I snap open a channel to McEvedy. "General, this is too -"

Light, heat and radiation wash over Dekirk City's centre and the leading elements of the 331st Division.

* * *

 **Entry #25**

 **Graham IV, Low Orbit**

 **Terran Hegemony**

 **00:00 17 February 2767**

My fighters are short of fuel and scattered by the shockwaves but they're my only eyes on the scene. I send them sweeping across the area, looking for SLDF survivors. The trailing elements – including most of the logistics – are intact but at the very least the leading 'Mech and Infantry regiments have been almost – perhaps entirely – wiped out.

At least the city's not collapsed entirely. It might not take much more… but not yet.

It occurs to me that this trap might have more than one arm. Sending the fighters out past the city shows the Imperial regiments are regrouping. With the SLDF in disarray… they might well be able to push them back.

"General McEvedy?"

No reply. His 'Mech wasn't at the forefront of the advance, but it wasn't at the back either. He might have made it, but if he's out of touch then I have to assume that he hasn't.

"All SLDF and HAF ground forces, this is _Praetorian_. A nuclear device has been set off in the centre of DeKirk City. Military and civilian casualties are high." There was no point sugar-coating that. "Amaris Imperial regiments are amassing for a counter-attack, something that will no doubt cause further civilian deaths. General McEvedy is for the moment out of communication."

I pause to let that sink in. "The Hegemony Armed Forces are to advance around the city to the south and intercept the _imperious_ soldiers of Stefan Amaris, protecting the civilians against further harm. The 331st Division are to take control of relief efforts in the city, both for our comrades and for the civilians. Fort Baldwin is to prepare what resources they have for disaster relief and the accommodation of refugees."

There's an almost immediate response – in most cases, compliance with my unofficial orders, but Lieutenant General Esther Wayne of the 3rd HAF Infantry brigade apparently has other ideas. "Praetorian, you've no authority to take charge. And my boys and girls can't take on 'Mechs unsupported."

"Don't worry, General, this won't be a fair fight. I just don't want them trying to use civilians for cover. As for authority, since I'm commanding what amounts to a small fleet I'm the equivalent to at least a Vice Admiral – which leaves me senior to everyone but Major General McEvedy. I hope that that adequately addresses your concerns."

Then I punctuate my answer by delivering a smashing fusillade down behind the Rim troops, catching their rear elements and herding them towards DeKirk City.

The very visible salvo seems to be sufficient persuasion for Wayne to accept my highly tenuous argument. "If you're going to do this then you'd damn well better have the chain of command regularised out in future," she grumbles but the APCs and their support move out after the heavier tanks a minute later.

I punch another salvo on the heels of the Rim formation – not _behind_ the heels, _on_ them. The combined fire of sixty Caspars and myself makes for quite a barrage.

The units that aren't smashed flat get the message almost immediately and formations break up as lighter, faster units pull forwards and away from their slower comrades. It's not very friendly of them, but what else can they do? Scattering gives them the best chance of _some_ of them getting away… except that my next salvo doesn't drop on the slower units, it hammers down left and right of the path of the advance, doing much less damage but boxing them in. It's almost like a cat playing with its prey, but I don't feel cruel about it. Not now. Not today.

They only have one way out, back towards Dekirk City and they _know_ that they aren't being herded that way for their health. But where else can they go? They have to hope that I'll stop shooting at them if they're in the suburbs (and they're right).

Me? I just don't want them to get away and I'm hitting them with constant pin-pricks now, hitting the hindmost and whatever clusters look as if someone is getting them organised.

What reaches the edge of Dekirk City isn't a military formation, it's a mob and one that's scattered and already half-broken. Some have the courage to try to get past the HAF regiments, others have the vastly greater courage to recognise that they're defeated and surrender. I don't fire on either of those groups but the angry tankers aren't as restrained and about half those trying to surrender aren't given the chance.

The third category are the ones that recoil away from the defences. They don't want to fight any more, but they're not inclined to surrender (fairly understandable for those of them that can see surrenders not being accepted). I won't let them retreat though.

Slowly and deliberately I fire shots behind each stray I can detect, making it clear that I know where they are and that I won't tolerate anything but approaching Dekirk City. Some, stubbornly, hold their ground. The next shots come down on their heads. The others head for the HAF again, for the most part throwing down weapons and doing their utmost to beg for surrender.

By my estimation around half the Rim garrison on Graham IV have been defeated, at the cost of at least a third of a division and hundreds of thousands of civilians.

And this might be the _easiest_ battle of the campaign, with them not having had the chance to go to ground.

I'd prefer to stick to fighting in space. It's cleaner. Then I remember the civilian dropships destroyed over Terra. Well, slightly cleaner. Hell, I was beginning to think I'd rather it was just all over but that requires the consent of both sides and I don't think Amaris is going to give up. Maybe I can stop this before the Star League comes apart at the seams but it's not going to be clean or quick or easy.

Now what am I forgetting?

Oh yes, the civilians. Now where's the national emergency broadcast channel? It's practically easier to filter for Amaris' propaganda than it is to look up what frequency I should tune to.

"…not satisfied with brutally bombarding the Fort Baxter, Kerensky's stormtroopers have –"

Yeah, just about of that crap. "Just about finished liberating Dekirk City from Amaris' army of occupation," I cut in, overpowering the planet-side transmitters by amping my own transmitter up to dangerous levels. It wasn't as if I have to worry about irradiating my crew and my own electronics are hardened to cope with it.

"My name is _Praetorian_ ," I announce. "I fought over Terra when Amaris launched his coup and I saw Unity City burn after he used nuclear weapons to destroy the Black Watch regiment. And now his soldiers have murdered thousands of helpless people in Dekirk City in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent their liberation. I strongly urge the citizens of Graham IV to evacuate their cities as I have no doubt that they will attempt such cowardly tactics again, when we come for them. Because we _will_ come for Amaris and for all his followers."

"We couldn't save Richard Cameron, but you can be damn sure we'll avenge him."

* * *

 **Entry #26**

 **Graham IV, Low Orbit**

 **Terran Hegemony**

 **12:00 17 February 2767**

It's around twelve hours since Dekirk City was nuked.

According to the plan, the 331st Division should be moving towards Fort Baldwin now by now. Given their losses, that's not going to happen for at least another day.

We brought considerable disaster relief equipment with us and Fort Ball had a large reserve of such gear as well – it's standard for Castles Brian. Unfortunately due to a combination of dropships destroyed on the way in and damage done to Fort Ball… well, even if we hadn't lost a lot of that equipment, we'd probably still have been overwhelmed.

Right now, the doctors and paramedics are working in two groups. Firstly, patching people up to the point that they can survive what's likely to be a long drive to another city. Secondly, dividing survivors into those who should be sent to the first group and those who should be moved to one of a dozen or so sets of tents where they are left to die, because there's nothing else we _can_ do.

There are hardened soldiers down there in tears because, in their eyes, the Star League should be able to help those people and we _can't_. Maybe if we had a dozen major hospitals but what we have are the outlying clinics and secondary medical facilities of Dekirk City; half a dozen military field hospitals; and, god bless them, several thousand civilian volunteers.

It doesn't help particularly that the roads are getting clogged. I'm getting some worrying cases of subsidence – localised fortunately – that suggest that parts of the Dekirk research facility underneath the city are collapsing. It could be that we've already lost everything at risk, or the rest could be about to give way. I've got a couple of 'Mech battalions racing around playing traffic warden and forcing broken down cars and trucks off the roads so that everyone else can get past.

That's important because I've strongly recommended that survivors evacuate the area entirely. If they have room and if they're willing, they're taking patched-up survivors with them. In some cases just because they're decent people and in others because they don't have friends or family outside the city to go to and their passengers can offer something along those lines. I don't really care why.

What I do care about is that on another, smaller scale, people are leaving the other cities. It seems that whether they believe me or the Rimjobs over who nuked Dekirk City a lot of Grahamites don't want to be under the same crosshairs themselves. Given that I don't want them there either… good.

"Praetorian, this is Augustine."

I focus on that channel. Augustine is the callsign for the company of combat engineers working their way through the area that the 331st's leading elements were when the nuke went off. Fortunately the weapon used was clean enough that standard gear makes the area relatively safe. "I read you, Augustine."

"We've found General McEvedy, sir. He's alive but his 'Mech and those of his command lance are half-buried – they're in one of the areas that's experienced subsidence."

Well that's just great. "Well if you can get him out, that'd be good. Once you've done that ask the troops from Fort Ball how to get into the underground complex. Someone's going to have to survey it and see what's collapsed and what can be kept from collapsing."

"I guess we can do that," the Captain replies unenthusiastically.

"I know, it's a shit job. But we don't know for sure if there's anyone trapped down there. I'd do it myself but I'm a bit too fat for those narrow space…"

He laughs, as much in surprise as amusement I think. "I can see that being a problem, _Praetorian_. Oh well, maybe there'll be some beautiful lady scientists like the ones in the holovids."

"Good luck with that." I end the conversation and turn my attention to our next steps. Questioning the more co-operative of the prisoners gave us a rough idea of what we were facing and about half of their regiments had been here, and a couple more in Fort Baxter. That left about four regiments and two Castles Brian under Republican control – it's much easier to call them than to confuse everyone with their new 'Imperial' allegiance.

Besides, I don't see any point catering to Amaris' ego.

Except for a few units that had been penning up the SLDF garrison in Fort Ball, the Republicans are all forted up. On the plus side, we can probably liberate the remaining cities fairly easily… but there's nothing to say that they might not have other booby-traps placed to gut the other cities if they don't remain 'loyal' to the Fat Man. It's a tough problem and I don't see any clever way around it.

Which means we'll have to do this the hard way. I'll call a conference of the senior officers and hand the decision back to McEvedy if he's in condition to take over again… but I'm pretty sure this is going to have to be the slow way: taking back each city, each Castle Brian and SDS site one at a time.

I'd been over-optimistic about our ability to do this on a shoestring. Now we'd need reinforcements and I wasn't inclined to start pulling more units off New Dallas – that could leave them dangerously unprotected. Thinking back to Zebebelgenubi though… maybe there's another option.

What have the Rimjobs been doing with SLDF reservists on Graham IV?

The answer's out there and it's not calculated to make me happy.

It seems that the Office of Policy and Doctrine – a bureaucratic group of vaguely defined purpose even in my databases – had stepped forwards as the primary agents of establishing the new order of the Amaris Empire. One of their first moves had been to recall all SLDF reservists on Graham IV and then to turn law enforcement loose on those who didn't report in.

If you think that they'd had those reservists equip themselves from the pre-stocked weapons and other gear in their bases I have a bridge across the Thames to sell you. Instead they'd been coralled into a hastily established a detention camp on the grounds of the Flight Academy of Graham.

It would be too much to hope that there wasn't a convenient means to get rid of them if we tried an obvious rescue but… well, we were being delayed anyway. Something more covert might work.

"General Wayne, this is Praetorian."

"What do you want now?" she snaps.

"Firstly, to tell you that General McEvedy has been found so there's some hope of him taking command back shortly. I'm sure you're even more pleased than I am. Secondly, I'm going to need some volunteers for a dangerous operation behind enemy lines. It seems that many thousands of SLDF reservists are in a detention camp and we need someone to find out about any booby traps before we rescue them…"

* * *

 **Entry #27**

 **Graham IV, Low Orbit**

 **Terran Hegemony**

 **12:00 27 February 2767**

The arrival of a _Scout_ -class jumpship at one of the nearest pirate point isn't a particular surprise. With the HPG station in Dekirk City destroyed, both sides are relying on couriers to communicate with the rest of the human race. Both loyal Hegemony and enemy Republican jumpships have hopped in (and mostly out) several times in the last week.

The surprise is the dropship that detached from it and began a hasty run in towards Graham IV. The _Titan_ -class ship would be a perfectly welcome addition to our forces here, but I don't recall asking for one. What I'm hoping for is a team of the Ulsop technicans to set up a new SDS control centre here – and if they brought another _Howdah_ to replace the one I've lost that would be great too.

Why don't I just wish for a Newgrange while I'm at it? As far as I know they're all out in the Periphery supporting the deployed fleets there. It'll be months before any of them can get here.

Still, it's got a friendly IFF so it _should_ be from New Dallas or one of McTiernan's hidden bases. I send a quick interrogatory signal and get a coded response.

A senior officer on an _inspection tour_!? This is a battlefield! We're about three hours from the operation to rescue the local SLDF reserve, I really don't have the patience for this and I'm sure that General McEvedy doesn't – he's making his move towards Mitchell City now, to draw attention away from the detention camp.

And now there's a second message, just a brief data squirt.

 _Tommy, this is important. Colonel Taylor Corvus._

Well hell.

And a third message: a request for permission to dock with me.

Better that I be distracted than McEvedy I suppose. Our conversation once he was back in command was a mix of congratulations for handling the job and brutal criticism for mis-handling the command arrangements. Then he apologised for not making clear to everyone how the chain of command was going to work with SLDF, HAF and myself all involved in this operation. Apparently it had escaped everyone else that he'd intended everyone to answer to the SLDF chain of command… which wasn't really acceptable.

General Wayne was very smug when it was deemed that my place in the chain of command would henceforth be after hers. Specifically I was flagged in to take command if McEvedy, his chief of staff and all four surviving SLDF and HAF brigade commanders were out of action, although as a sop to the pride I pretend not to have, I'm the overall commander of space operations for this mess.

Which drops this in my lap.

And I can't entirely rule out that this [i]might[/i] be a trap. There [i]is[/i] a price on my head it seems. Apparently I'm a rogue war-machine, evidence of the hubris of House Cameron, a mass murderer (which is more painful an accusation than the rest) and a danger to everyone around me. Amaris has offered a Ducal title to the commander who destroys me (or, in a touch of realism, to their heir) and unspecified but no doubt horrible consequences for anyone that passes up an opportunity to do me wrong.

Still, they'd have to have the right codes _and_ have suborned Corvus if they're working for Amaris.

It occurs to me that both would be much easier if whoever is on that dropship has the same mission but from Kerensky.

If I'm destroyed, Graham IV and the ground force here are open to counter-attack by the Republican navy. I'm confident the SLDF leaders here know that. I'm _fairly_ sure that Kerensky wouldn't order my demise with such urgency as to write off an entire Division and support.

"Permission to dock at collar #3 granted." I start pressurizing the necessary compartments – mostly I don't keep my limited life support active. What would the point be?

It's an acceptable risk, I hope.

Hmm. According to the registry the dropship is part of the Thirteenth Line Squadron – Kerensky's own escort. The first person out of the hatch was Taylor Corvus. Then two marines. And then Admiral Joan Brandt, ex-Director of Naval Command, last I'd heard acting as commander of the Army Group fighting in the Magistracy of Canopus. Well, the senior officer part had been accurate – absent Kerensky himself officers didn't _get_ much more senior.

In honour of the occasion I sound off a recording of bosun's pipes. "Welcome aboard, Admiral."

She looks around, then up at the forward bulkhead. I believe – for obvious reasons I've never actually seen it – that most SLDF warships have the ships' name and some kind of badge or emblem there in their shuttle hangers. So that the crew can find out if they've arrived at the right ship if they return from surface leave half-drunk I presume, although it'd be rather late by then I'd think.

I don't have any such emblem, although if I keep getting traffic like this maybe I should see about arranging one.

"You're _Praetorian_ then," Brandt concludes. "Do you have anywhere I can sit down? I've come quite a long way to talk to you."

"Hopefully to do more than that." I open and close hatches so that the four of them can walk into the living quarters set aside for the First Lord and his household if they ever had to flee Terra aboard me. "What hospitality I have is yours. I'm afraid the late First Lord never got around to fitting me with a wine cellar, but I presume Colonel Corvus remembers where she left the beer."

"That'll do." Brandt takes a seat facing the holoscreen and on cue I project my face on it. "You're remarkable, you know. Have you ever tried to have a conversation with a Caspar? Not just ordering them around in battles?"

"Once or twice. It's depressing. I gather they're based in part on a mental map of the famous Admiral Kinru Dvarahal. Judging by military history he was undeniably brilliant but judging by his progeny he wasn't much of a conversationalist."

"Not like you at all." Brandt looks thoughtful. "Whose mental mapping did they base you on?"

"That's a very good question," I admit ruefully. "However I don't have that information. I gather that a lot of information about me was classified or outright destroyed in order to keep me secret from the rest of the SLDF."

"I imagine that quite a number of scientists will want to lynch the Camerons for hiding away a functional AI from them. You're something of a holy grail in some circles. That's beside the point though, Praetorian." She points at Corvus. "The Colonel has told me quite a bit about you but not enough for me to answer the critical question I'm presented with. So, Praetorian. Why _shouldn't_ I order you destroyed?"

* * *

 **Entry #28**

 **Graham IV, Low Orbit**

 **Terran Hegemony**

 **13:00 27 February 2767**

The advantage of being a computer is that you don't need to visibly bat an eyelid and it's possible to get over a shock very quickly. "The only reason that you _should_ destroy me is if you don't trust me, Admiral. That is the crux of the matter, isn't it?"

"There are doubts, yes. You are, by your nature," Brandt gestures to indicate, I believe, my hull and weapons suite, "capable of immense destruction should you so choose."

"And I have chosen to so employ myself, but in the cause of the Star League. Just, I might add, as the commanders of rather a large number of warships have chosen to do. Do you intend to destroy them too?"

"There's a difference. They've… got crews to act as safeguards. They aren't lone individuals, unrestrained."

"Except by their training and morals? Or by, let us say, by logistical concerns. Admiral have you seen the holes in me?" I switch the screen to a damage control schematic that's got a lot of reds and oranges across the outline of my hull. "I'm going to need patching up if I survive the next few weeks and who else can I turn to for that but the SLDF?"

"I can think of at least five people who'd at least try in return for certain considerations."

"Considerations that would violate some Star League laws, most likely be in conflict with my core directives and quite possibly would leave me enslaved." I pause, switching the display back to 'my' face. "Thank you, no. I'll take my chances here." And I can think of _nine_ people that would be willing to open me up in a dockyard (putting me back together being optional) but I don't plan to compare lists.

"Well to rephrase then, why should we trust you?"

"All I'm asking, Admiral, is that you base that decision upon the same things you'd use with anyone else: my words and my actions."

A thought occurs to me and I cross-reference her file. "Changing the subject for a moment, I'd appreciate your input in an operation General McEvedy and I are running on the surface."

"I'm not exactly a ground specialist," she demurs, eyes suspicious.

"But you know this ground." I bring up a map she should recognise. "You graduated from the Flight Academy of Graham and it's currently been re-purposed by the Republicans as the headquarters for a detention camp set up around it."

"A detention camp?" asks Corvus in surprise. "For who?"

"SLDF reservists. Amaris' Office of Planning and Doctrine apparently consider them a security risk. I hope very much that he is right."

"The Office of what?"

"An ill-defined subset of the Bureau of Star League Affairs that's in his pocket. Possibly since before the Coup. Think of them as his watchdogs over the Hegemony government. The Rim Worlds Republic has a long tradition for dealing with internal resistance and it seems Amaris intends to continue it here."

"Crush hard, crush often and don't spare the whips," Brandt mused bleakly. "I wasn't very fond of the Academy, to be honest. Just of the flying. But they deserve better than that. What's the plan?"

"There's a nuclear weapon set up to take up the camp it if looks like the prisoners are about to escape or be rescued. One back up, biological or chemical, we're not sure. Commando teams are going to try to disable them both and we've got a dozen [i]Leopard[/i]s ready to airdrop 'Mechs and a scratch company of every jump-trained infantryman we can scrape up to handle the more conventional defenses."

"That's it?"

"If you want a squad by squad breakdown I can bury you in details."

"God, no." She actually shudders. "But I do know the airspace, including the nap of the earth parts. Show me the flight paths for the _Leopard_ s. There are a few places flight control at the Academy doesn't have good coverage."

I can do better than that, of course, and put her through to the crews that will be flying the mission. Corvus slips away and returns with four bottles of beer that she hands around. The marines wait for the nod from Brandt before sipping very sparingly. The Admiral isn't so restrained and Corvus empties her bottle quickly before escaping back to my kitchen spaces.

"Do you know what you're doing, Tommy?" she asks. "If the Admiral tells Kerensky that you're a threat…"

"Then I'll be dealt with as a threat. Right now, I'm in the uncomfortable position of being as nearly indispensable as anyone in the Hegemony. I'm sure she and Kerensky'll be just as glad once that's no longer the case, and by then they may have grown accustomed to me."

"Familiarity breeds contempt," Corvus murmurs, quietly enough that I'm not sure it's aimed at me. There is nothing I can think of to say to it.

Upon reflection, she takes a fruit juice back to the lounge.

Brandt watches the operation unfold on the screen, data from units involved intercut with a computer graphic – the cloud cover is still far too heavy for the time of year. Grahamite ecologists are probably going to be very worried once we manage to talk to any organised group of them.

The nuke doesn't go off and as best the 'commando teams' can determine the back-up hasn't poisoned anyone. Casualties are heavy, but fortunately only for the Republicans. The Office of Planning and Doctrine demonstrate a shocking readiness to die for the cause. I'm assured that none of them offered to surrender even when very, very angry SLDF reservist swarmed them over and tore several of them apart with bare hands. I don't like where that's going but it's McEvedy's problem right now.

"I'm almost disappointed," Brandt tells me, "That you didn't provide musical accompaniment to the operation."

It would have been a bit of a giveaway that we were up to something if I'd transmitted something. Still, she _had_ asked for it.

"~When the stars shine bright through the engine's trail; and the dust of another world drops behind. When my ship is free of the open sky. It's a damn good day to my way of mind.~"

Brandt hears me out, a curious look on her face. Then she nods sharply. "You'll do. You'll do."

* * *

 **Interlude #4**

 **Unity City, North America**

 **Terra, Terran Hegemony**

 **15:00 1 March 2767**

Takiro Kurita had ruled the Draconis Combine since before any other member of the Star League Council had been born. In comparison to most of his family he was considered contemplative and mild of temper.

Amaris granted himself license to doubt that. The white-haired man on the screen veritably crackled with fury. "You claim to be First Lord? _You_? Your hands still red with the blood of my nephew's son, you expect the submission of the Dragon? Your venality was never in doubt, Stefan Amaris, but clearly what pass for your wits are as vacant as your loyalty."

"Now fall to your knees and pray that Kerensky reaches Terra before my loyal soldiers do. For he will merely crush you like an ant beneath his boot, while I have given my son very explicit orders as to your fate if fortune smiles and you should come into our hands."

Remarkably, the vitriol remained fresh on the… how many times had he replayed it now?

Dammit, dammit, dammit.

It wasn't as if Amaris had forced a gun into Drago Kurita's hand. The stupid bastard had been in protective custody, far too valuable to risk, until the SLDF broke him out looking for Amanda Cameron.

For his part, Patrick Scoffins seemed less disconcerted by the ancient Coordinator's wrath than resigned to it. "The garrisons at Moore, Mara and Nashira are all reporting Combine warships and transports in the outer system," he announces, offering a sheaf of reports to the Emperor. "We don't have enough ships there to contest the outer systems without concentrating squadrons and they're spread all along the border."

"Concentrate squadrons against the Combine?" Amaris snarled. "With that damn ship at Graham IV like a dagger at my back? Are you mad?"

"I don't advocate it, but the decision is yours," the general conceded drily. "The worlds are technically part of the Combine anyway. It's remotely possible taking them back might satisfy the Coordinator. Shall I withdraw the garrisons? I can certainly use the soldiers elsewhere."

Amaris made an irritated gesture that translated to permission. OPD could handle making taking those three worlds painful for Kurita without regular units to help them, and if not they'd better learn quickly. And Scoffins has a point: other garrisons were certainly in need of reinforcements.

"What's the situation on Carver V?" he asked.

"No change. They're unfortunately well dug in."

"Well that machine of Kerensky's showed us how to deal with that." Amaris' mustache twitched. "I'm sure the navy can find some wrecks to drop on Quantico at… what's the term? Sufficient velocity. Once that's done, Milton-Davis's forces can be cut back as well."

"I'll pull her off entirely, sir." Dropping major kinetic weapons on Carver V – which didn't have a single continental mass – was going to have far more widespread consequences than doing so on Graham IV had had on that world. Quite possibly, the resultant tsunami could eradicate the human presence there entirely.

Amaris nodded. "Yes. I'm disappointed in her. Well thought. Give me a short list of replacements within forty-eight hours, Patrick."

"Sir."

"That machine will be the death of me." And the teams working on the SDS weren't any help. He'd hung the first project leader, someone from NETC, when he'd estimated three years to bring the drones under control. Who was it who'd said it was as well to kill an Admiral every now and then? Some French philosopher? Didn't matter. Nothing mattered except lifting Damocles' Sword from over his head. "All it would have to do is jump here and it would have a fleet waiting for it. More than two hundred drones."

Scoffins nodded regretfully. "We could cause him significant problems, but even with a year to work the orbital and ground stations could not repel such an attack. Our advantage is that for the moment he lacks the ground troops to follow through on the surface."

"That didn't stop him at Graham IV though, did it? He found the forces for that."

"One Division, sire. It was exceedingly rash to launch an invasion with so few soldiers and reports indicate that losses at Dekirk City were severe. Similar landings here would be a devastating failure. Invading Terra with less than a Corps would be foolhardy in the extreme and that will take time to amass and prepare."

"If he has been foolhardy and rash once and seen success then he will attempt it again," decided Amaris. "Have the drones destroyed. Concentrate the entire fleet if you have to. I want them here to destroy _Praetorian_ when he comes. But make sure he doesn't have a fleet-in-waiting for him."

The general paled. "The drones will defend themselves, sire. We lack the capacity to cancel that part of their orders."

"Then the Navy had better get very good at killing them. Because whatever those Caspars can do to them, I swear to you, Patrick, that pernicious machine will be far worse. So we must break him here and then roll back his conquests. Retake Graham IV and New Dallas, then Kerensky will think twice. He won't weep to see _Praetorian_ destroyed, I assure you."

"The _Praetorian_ , if it is a machine intelligence as reports suggest, appears to be an extremely able field commander, sire. It would be shortsighted of Kerensky to destroy him."

"Aleksandr Kerensky is anything but shortsighted, Patrick. In the short term, the machine is valuable on the battlefield. In the longer term it is of uncertain allegiance and asks questions as to the legal status of an artificial intelligence that no sane ruler wishes to address. It is increasingly unlikely that Kerensky will eliminate it himself, but far more manageable from his perspective if it is a martyr for his cause."

Scoffins was far too practised in the politics of power – at his level of the military it was all political or so close as not to matter – to show obvious nervousness. "As an alternative to mustering the entire fleet here, we could strike at Graham IV as soon as possible. It is highly probable that he would have no serious support from the SLDF and destroying him there would leave the option of retaining the drones here for your service."

For a long moment Amaris weighed the decision and then shook his head. "No, I can't trust them. I can't even trust ones we build. That machine could compromise them too for all we know. I believe we have some of the drone fighters under control – use those first, use them all up. I'll rely on men to guard me in future."

"I'll take care of it sire." Scoffins bowed deeply before backing towards the door. Attention already elsewhere, Amaris reached for the controls and Kurita's message began to repeat itself once more.


	5. Chapter 5

**Entry #29**

 **Graham IV, Low Orbit**

 **Terran Hegemony**

 **15:00 3 March 2767**

"We have," Brandt announces, "Some options to consider."

The officers council has no binding authority over her but it's a useful way for her to get feedback. We aren't meeting in person. That would be imprudent, but most of III and V Corps are in the Hegemony and their HQs are set up Graham IV so we can holo-conference.

I think the refugee situation down there may be stabilising but if I say that to anyone then I'm sure Murphy will interfere so…

The Rimjobs didn't nuke any more cities before McEvedy and Wayne managed to convincingly report that the planet was liberated but some of the towns are in a bad way for one reason or another and as far as I can tell from captured records there are a few hundred hold-outs somewhere.

I, like every other senior officer in the conference, get a side-feed with a strategic map of the Hegemony, each system decorated with a variety of icons displaying the defenses, industries and other salient data as best our intelligence could display.

"We control at this time, two planets of the Terran Hegemony. There are other contested worlds – the DCMS has mobilised to occupy worlds that were previously jointly administered and all signs are that the other Member States will follow suite, with the Lyrans likely to be next. Nonetheless, we are a long, long way from having put down the Usurpation."

"Between General Badler and General Lyons we have enough forces to expand our little corridor. There are, of course, a variety of choices." Coloured lights appear upon the map, distinctly marking out each. "Firstly, we could reasonably secure Bordon and Connaught. There is the possibility that Amaris would withdraw the garrisons rather than engage in an extended battle for worlds that would be less easily reinforced than others deeper into the Hegemony."

"As an alternative, there are four worlds between New Dallas and our current position. Taking them would ease communications. Pollux and Tyrfing's SDS drones have been confirmed as inactive – and largely compromised by _Praetorian_ already. Castor and Devil's Rock don't even have Castles Brian to protect them."

I dislike these options. Liberating any world from Amaris is a positive change of course, but not all worlds are equal. It will be another three months before the rest of Brandt's Army Group can assemble. These worlds will leave us spread thin to protect from counter-attacks and will not increase the pressure upon Amaris.

"There is also Carver V." A planet about as close to Terra as we are now, and halfway to Brandt's homeworld of Outreach. "We have reports that the CAAN facility there is still holding out. Relieving them would provide additional resources and it would be an excellent staging area for further operations to liberate worlds rimwards of Terra. Nearby is Keid - even a raiding campaign upon the shipyards there could significantly impair Amaris' efforts to build up his navy."

"Alternatively there is the possibility of moving corewards. New Earth is a viable target and liberating the headquarters of the SLDF would be a significant moral victory. Taking Denebola and Alula Australis could provide a substantial reserve of Caspar drones to secure liberated worlds but that would of course be dependent upon control systems that we don't have yet – apparently it could be a year or more to build new control stations here, much less anywhere else."

She pauses and I am morally certain that everyone's eyes are fixed on the target she has not mentioned.

"Your opinions, ladies and gentlemen?"

McEvedy, born and raised in Minnesota, asks the obvious question. "We have nine divisions and the HAF can hold New Dallas and Graham until the next units arrive. Why not strike at Terra before Amaris can reinforce it further?"

"I do not recommend that course of action," I say with some regret. "While we could very likely secure the system from Terra's high orbitals outward, to attempt landings – much less a ground campaign – would be a marginal prospect with the forces at hand."

"What do you know,y- _Praetorian_?"

"I have – and have shared – a detailed breakdown of Terra's emplaced defenses, updated with my own observations during the Coup. Absent Amaris withdrawing from the bulk of the Hegemony and focusing upon its defense, landing a liberation force on Terra before the end of the year is possible. However, we must anticipate heavy fighting and concurrently heavy losses. This is the most industrialised, urbanised, fortified and heavily populated planet in the Star League."

"Nine divisions – less casualties during the landing – could possibly create a foothold but we do not currently have the naval strength to blockade Terra so Amaris can reinforce and grind your troops down by attrition before our own reinforcements can arrive. It's also certain that it will be the highest priority for restoring SDS control. If we are facing a fully active drone flotilla then our chances of even a landing shrink dramatically."

"Thank you, _Praetorian_ ," Brandt resumes control of the meeting as if it was scripted. "We _will_ return to Terra and the sooner the better but we will not half-ass this. Two Corps are not sufficient for this, but by the summer we will have thirteen SLDF Corps and a full HAF Corps over and above our garrisons, with First and Second Fleets rebuilt out of ships drawn from garrison postings."

"That, however, is months away. In the meantime we should not let Amaris rest upon his laurels."

General Lyons' face nods on the screen. "I don't recommend striking back towards the border then. That won't ratchet up the pressure on Amaris."

"Same for Castor and Devil's Rock. They'd be easy, but there's not the impact," McEvedy chimes. He seems to have adjusted very quickly to being shot down.

"A valid point," agrees Brandt. Then she looks away from the holo-camera. "What's that?" The words in the Admiral's command centre were too quiet for most to make out but I was under no such limitations. _Damn. This isn't going to help at all._

Brandt doesn't try to mask the news from anyone else though. "Ladies and gentlemen, I've just been advised that the 34th Royal BattleMech Division and their escorts have mutinied against the orders from the Commanding General and is expected to enter the Hegemony any day now."

"Are they traitors?" asks Lyons sharply.

"Not as such." The Admiral faces us squarely. "According to their last transmissions they're apparently intent on liberating their traditional homeworld, Epsilon Indi, from Amaris."

"According to information gathered from McTiernan's efforts, Epsilon Indi has a fully active SDS grid under Republican control," I remind the group harshly. "The 34th don't stand a chance."

* * *

 **Entry #30**

 **Graham IV, Lagrange Jump Point**

 **Terran Hegemony**

 **16:00 4 March 2767**

"Epsilon Indi is three jumps away," Corvus reminds me by radio from the shuttle bringing her out to join me.

"One of those jumps will be via Carver V. We can at least scout the situation." I'm distracted watching the team from Ulsop finish up fixing a new Howdah in place. I'll need to be at full capacity for this. Another dozen Howdahs are down on the surface of Graham IV, being converted into a mobile command base for the Caspars left in the system. In theory it's enough that I'm not needed here.

Other crews are improvising patches across my worst damage. It's not as good as a full repair yard could do, by any stretch of the imagination, but it's what a damage control team could rig up if I'd had any.

I am _not_ going to write off an SLDF Division if there is any reasonable chance I can keep them alive. Corvus feels more or less the same way and between us we've talked Brandt into it. I'm about halfway convinced that if we hadn't the Admiral would have ordered us anyway, her objections had a _pro forma_ ring to them.

"What if we arrive too late?"

"Then we cry, swear or whatever coping measure is necessary, accept that we did all we could and take it out on the next RimJobs we encounter."

"Okay, I can live with that." Corvus knows exactly what I can do. I've made no secret of it. I know, although I've never discussed it with her, that she visited the bombardment zones outside of Dekirk City after I smashed the RWA units there. Even if she hadn't she'd had an excellent view of what I did outside Geneva. "And if we do arrive in time? I don't have authority over General Collins and even if I did, he's technically in a state of mutiny."

"General Collins and his command have been subjected to court martial _in absentia_." Subject to the approval of Kerensky but we could cross that bridge later and Brandt seemed confident that her lawyers had crossed the Ts and dotted the Is. "The verdict is a dishonourable discharge and transfer of their custody to the Hegemony Armed Forces."

"Meaning you?"

"Meaning me. They can, if we can link up with them, retake Epsilon Indi although with only one Division it'll be worse than Graham IV. And they're no longer welcome in the SLDF. Between those two points, it's felt they will have expiated the sin of mutiny."

"You make it sound religious."

"Isn't it?"

Amaris on the throne of the Star League, a mutiny in the ranks of the SLDF – what a nightmare. Still, Kerensky is probably adequately braced what with a couple of Divisions having defected to the Periphery rebels over the last couple of years.

I busy myself checking the datalinks to the Caspars going with me. With the new tactical computer in place I should be able to take a full set with me. A _centuria_ one engineer, apparently an aficionado of classical history, had dubbed me. Eighty subordinates, organised into ten groups of eight. Very Roman Legion.

Everything seems to be working although the final integration requires me to go through a partial reset.

I don't want to do that. Not again. But there are two things I want even less: to let the 34th down by not taking enough force to get them to their destination; and to explain _why_ I don't like the idea of resetting those systems.

Maybe it won't be so bad this time?

"Let's get this over with," I tell the technicans and flip the 'switch'.

Nothing out of the ordinary seems to happen. Maybe it was just a glitch. I guess I'll find out when everything switches back on.

 _We're over Terra, myself and my century of Caspars at the spearhead of an SLDF fleet that numbers over a thousand._

Corvus keeps talking – I get the impression she's bored on the shuttle – until I suggest she takes a nap. Once we jump to Carver V we may wind up getting shot at, which isn't conducive to sleep.

 _The Republican fleet, outnumbered ten to one, aren't even trying to hold us back. As we sweep down upon the planet they scatter, spreading out. If we disperse to catch them, a few ships might get lucky and fight on something approaching even terms – or escape – but the fact is, we're not here for them. We're here for Terra._

Brandt had insisted that besides regularising me as an officer in the Hegemony Armed Forces (with a commission, signed by Titus Clay, now framed next to my medal and declaring me to be Vice Admiral Thomas Praetorian) that I should also have a crew, even if it amounted to a truncated staff of Corvus to advise me and four NCOs whose major job was keeping my limited habitation spaces in better condition than I had previously bothered to.

 _The same face as before, super-imposed upon the globe. He mouths two words: Scorched Earth._

In addition, formal permanent crews were assigned to the Caspars under my command although they were still expected to get off the ships as soon as the jumps were complete. There may not be much _practical_ difference between the crew aboard a Caspar blown apart by the enemy and the crew aboard a Caspar used as a missile, but I'm conscious of the moral difference.

 _I know what it means. I Know What It Means. I KNOW WHAT IT MEANS._

So that's the Epsilon Indi Expedition: nearly a thousand people under my command.

 _I just can't say it. I can't act. I'm frozen in mid-deceleration as the ships spread out, as orbital weapon platforms that didn't exist during the Coup turn around and as missiles begin to rise from the surface, not towards orbit but in ballistic arcs._

It's easier to be responsible for the abstract of the Star League than for the reality of people I know as individuals.

 _I hear the screams and I can't do anything. I can't stop it. I watch and I listen…_

The technicans give me the all clear to re-activate everything, but I pause a moment to brace myself in case… just in case.

 _…as Terra burns._

I dearly want to murder my subconscious, I realise as all systems come back online.

* * *

 **Entry #31**

 **Pirate Point, Carver VII**

 **Terran Hegemony**

 **03:00 5 March 2767**

I've picked a very obscure point to jump in at, taking advantage of the very complex movements of the moons around the gas giant that happens to be within six months or so of its closest pass to the inhabited Carver V, which isn't very close.

As a result, it's not very well secured and there's a decent chance of no one noticing the jump signatures of eighty or so ships arrive. I'd say the odds are… oh, at least twelve percent that no one will notice us.

And if they do? Well, eighty Caspars and me. I think we can handle it.

As far as I can tell, no one _has_ noticed, which might be because pretty much every dropship in the system is heading towards the Nadir or Zenith jump points, escorted or chivvied along by a pair of Republican warships – one going each way. I could probably take them out but it'd delay reaching Epsilon Indi so it's probably not worth it.

So why is everyone – looks like a division or so of Rim Worlds Army units in dropships, damn, maybe I _should_ break cover and take them out – leaving Carver V? Why? Has Amaris decided to consolidate? McTiernan hasn't reported anything like this but it could be a new development.

I start scanning through radio channels, trying to pick up RWA chatter, signals from the CAAN holdouts on Quantico or even civilian broadcasts to explain what's going on.

There's not a lot.

In fact there's barely anything, which is odd. Carver V has a population of almost one hundred and twenty million people, mostly on the shores of the larger islands where they populate the famous resorts and the arguably more important fisheries industry. I ought to be getting a lot more traffic than this.

There's quite a lot you can do telescopically by pointing a set of sensors across a sizeable area all towards the same target. I had eighty Caspars, now spread across several thousand kilometers. Since there wasn't any immediate threat, I can spread them out further and… that's a lot of cloud cover on Carver V. Not impossible for it to be natural but…

Okay, even at this distance, I should be able to make out the artifical lights of _some_ of the cities. Either there's a lot of cloud or they're blacked out or…

Ah, something on radio at last. Not strong enough to make out _what_ but there is some traffic on the emergency bands. Well that becomes clearer. Some sort of disaster. I'm not going to use the word natural here because I'm not convinced that it's accurate.

It takes about an hour to painstakingly shift ships around to build up an array that can get some sense out of the emergency traffic and then Carver V's turned enough that I can get a firsthand look at the cause of the problem: a massive thermal signature across most of what used to be the island of Quantico, home to the CAAN training facility and associated fortifications.

About half of the island isn't there anymore. The rest of it is on fire.

And there's one word that's I've managed to decipher repeatedly out of the weak signals.

Tsunami.

I don't know how, but "This has to be Amaris' fault."

"What has to be?" asks Corvus.

"Carver V… there's not enough radio traffic. I think… I think something terrible has happened."

"Is there anything we can do?"

I bring up a map of Quantico and overlay the damage. "I'm not sure what could have done this. It would take a phenomenal amount of nukes. Maybe a…" Something about the pattern of damage catches my eye. "Oh."

"Oh?"

"I think I _do_ know what happened." On the screen I display the aftermath of my improvised kinetic bombardment of the Graham IV SDS command centre. "I get the distinct impression that I inspired them to extreme measures to neutralise the CAAN hold-outs."

"But what would that do to the rest of the planet? There are settlements all aro- oh. When they hit the base…"

"Thousands – tens of thousands - of tons of debris would have been flung into the sea, creating a tidal wave. Carver V's got so little land that there's not much to stop it from sweeping around the planet. Chances are that most of the coastal settlements got hit and that's ninety percent of the population right there."

"There will be survivors, surely?"

"Oh I expect so." My voice is bitter. "Half, maybe?" It's a guess, nothing more. "Of course, with the infrastructure gone the injured survivors won't be in the best of places. I'd expect… a quarter again dead in the week afterwards – the shipping should be fairly safe and they would have some precautions. So _only_ fifty or sixty million people dead."

Corvus groans and buries her head in her hands. "How can anyone do that? It's monstrous!"

"Thanks."

"Not you. You shot at a military base."

"So did they. Let's be honest – do you think I _haven't_ killed civilians so far? I fired into the heart of a major city on Terra and I'm pretty sure I killed a fair number of innocent bystanders on Zebebelgenubi and Graham IV."

"Yes, but not deliberately. They had to know what would happen."

"Would that make it better, or worse?"

The Colonel shook her head. "What do you mean?"

"Is it worse if they did this knowing it would mean killing millions… or if someone who didn't realise that ordered it and the local commander, who would have known, did it anyway?"

"That just makes my head hurt. Is there something we can do?"

"Without screwing up our mission? Just watch… and remember."

* * *

 **Entry #32**

 **Outer System, Epsilon Indi**

 **Lockdale Province, Terran Hegemony**

 **14:00 19 March 2767**

Jumping into the outer system, about as far out as the standard jump points, is generally pretty safe. The chances of anyone being close enough to pose a problem when you jump into an otherwise unremarkable point in space are about on par with winning the lottery. Actually, worse.

While the odds of arriving just as the 34th Royal BattleMech Division do are much better, they're still hundreds of thousands to one against and in both cases probability plays out without any long shots.

"Well either they got here already and were destroyed –"

"Don't even joke about it!" Corvus snapped. She paused. "Is Epsilon Indi…"

I check. "I'm getting signal traffic on civilian bands. Looks mostly normal."

"That's a relief."

"Let me get a count of the M-5 drones in-system and if they're all around then probably the 34th haven't arrived yet. Unless, playing devil's advocate, they're a couple of light days away and the light of their arrival hasn't reached this part of the system yet."

She nods her understanding.

We've talked on the way about our options once we get here. It's a more desirable topic of conversation than Carver V. The main problem, of course, is that we have no co-ordination with the 34th Royal BattleMech Division. Without knowing where they'll arrive it's hard to open up a route for them in advance. And that's not mentioning the very real risk of friendly fire. They've no particular reason not to believe that any _Caspar_ s they encounter are under Amaris' control, assuming that they actually heard of me at all.

I'm sure my reputation _is_ spreading, but they must have set a fast pace if they rushed all the way from the Outworlds Alliance to the Terran Hegemony in a couple of months so they've probably not stopped to get the news. As far as our own intelligence goes, their only escort is a transport flotilla they picked up in the Combine. Rear Admiral Braso has an excellent record, but only eight warships.

"Okay, interesting. I'm picking up the eighteen Caspars that should be at the Zenith point… looks like they're not active. But the fifty-six that were over the planet aren't there. _Most_ of them are burning away from the Nadir point and I don't see the M-5 drones that should be covering that."

"Do you think the 34th came in there then? If they hit the drones at that point and then got overwhelmed by the survivors…?"

"It's… possible. Although why they'd hang around there long enough for M-5s to get there I have no idea." I calculated. "If they were there already, maybe. The transports would have been jumping right into an ambush. But would the Republicans risk uncovering Epsilon Indi without ironclad evidence that this was the only attack they could escape?"

Corvus groaned. "Amaris must have pretty good intel to pull of the Coup. It's not impossible he did get information about the 34th."

"I suppose, although if even Kerensky didn't know where they were going to jump in, the information can't have been widespread."

"Who else could they have been fighting."

I think for a minute. "I suppose McTiernan could have raided them, but again, why move more than fifty M-5s out that far? They'd have to _know_ that there was someone there to fight."

"What if…"

"What if what?" I ask.

Corvus shrugs. "Well you've made quite a mess out of the Republicans by taking over drones. What if they decided to eliminate every drone they didn't already control?"

I whistle. "That'd be quite a job. They'd defend themselves you know?"

"Yeah, well according to our intel there should be eighteen M-5 drones at both jump points. What if the ships moving away from the Nadir point are what's left of the planetary fleet after taking them out and they're heading for the Zenith point to pick them off too?"

It takes a minute or so for me to run some simulations. Eighteen drones defending automatically against fifty-six being run on remote direction from Epsilon Indi... "The numbers aren't inconsistent with that theory. It's a big job he's taken on though."

"It's really going to make it difficult to replace your losses," warns Corvus.

"True, but if that's really his policy… wow. There're a couple of thousand drones out there and if he's committed himself to destroy more than half of them then Amaris just tied his navy up for a couple of months. That's a lot of time for our reinforcements to arrive. And we do know that the three squadrons over at the Zenith jump point are still available…"

"What are you thinking?"

I sent orders out to the _Caspar_ Centuria. "Get ready for company. I'm recalling the crews from the other ships and then we'll make a low emissions run to intercept our friends over there before they reach the Zenith point. I'm pretty sure they've not spotted us now so a short, high gravity burn to build up some speed has a good chance of not being noticed until we're close enough for it to be hard for them to evade."

"I doubt that they'll try to avoid action," observes Corvus. "You're their number one target, they'd almost have to try to destroy you. And we won't be near enough to pot-shot their command centre this time."

"Well I could try. I wasn't exactly shooting from the hip last time, but I'd rather keep strikes like that to a minimum in the future. I'd have to hit the primary and secondary command centres to be sure, so that's double the damage."

"Are you sure that you can afford not to destroy them?"

"I'm not doing this to prove that I'm better at killing people than Amaris is," I point out. "I could be, easily. I've got enough firepower under my command to destroy every settlement on Epsilon Indi. But that doesn't appeal to me and not just because it would probably convince Brandt to rethink keeping me around. There are some lines you don't cross and the sites aren't as isolated as Fort Baxter was."

* * *

 **Entry #33**

 **Zenith Jump Point, Epsilon Indi**

 **Lockdale Province, Terran Hegemony**

 **06:00 25 March 2767**

The drones pick us up well before we were in weapons range and break off from their measured approach to the Zenith squadrons since it's fairly obvious that if they keep doing that we'll be able to make a slashing attack across their rears.

Instead they turn to cut across our course, which turns into something of a guessing game. Their objective is to cross our T so that they can focus their broadsides against the aft of my little fleet as we slow to engagement range - preferably across my rear if they can manage it.

How cute, they think they're hunting me.

Eighty-one transmitters strike out in unison: " _There's a message written in the glory, It was there before time began_."

They're about to learn that they're very much wrong about that. May as well warn them about the oncoming Bad Days.

We thread the needle right through their formation because I don't need to slow down. Well, we _mostly_ thread the needle as the tightly twisting pattern of my Caspar's courses isn't just to mask me from their fire. Seven of them don't make it through the formation but they crash headlong into M-5C drones, breaking up squadron links and wherever possible sending the resultant wreckage crashing into the formation.

" _There's a secret hidden in the story, Final link between God and Man._ "

Forty-six of them scream out of the merge, taking fire from a fleet that outnumbers them three to two. As we twist around, both sides slowing and turning towards the next round I shepherd my more damaged escorts aside and fill the slots with all eighteen of the fresh Caspars waiting at the Zenith point.

I truly believe I can hear the swearing coming from Epsilon Indi. They're making the classic mistake: over-controlling by remote instead of letting the drones have their head. There's a limit to what they _can_ do at a range of light minutes but there's an even tighter limit on what they _should_ do and they're not respecting it.

Against someone who can think faster than they can already…

" _Wheels are turning, Souls are_ burning."

"I think I'm getting motion sickness," Corvus complains as I take several more months off the life-expectancy of my spinal structural members with a twisting maneuver that brings my less damaged broadside to bear upon a pair of enemy M-5s that are right at the extreme edge of my range. With targeting data from _Caspar_ s much closer I burn the spine right out of one and punch out the primary sensor array on the other.

"Feel free to get out and walk." She'd brought her 'Mech too, for some reason. Not that I particularly begrudge her those seventy tons of cargo space, but what use she thought it'd be…

Radio shockwaves announced nuclear weapons were in play – my guess is that they'd been holding back during the first pass due to limited onboard stocks. Mostly likely they used some on the Nadir squadrons. One of my _Caspar_ s is a million scattered pieces and five others are carrying scars that make me glad I'm better armoured than they are.

I twist the path away and check the timing. Double check it.

Yeah. That works.

I stop singing and cut in the guitar solo opening for Meatloaf's Out of the Frying Pan. Not just for effect either. Twenty Voidseekers I launched earlier are cutting a ballistic course that takes them right behind the enemy formation and each of them is packing a pair of missiles tipped with Mk II nuclear warheads.

Their engines flare up in brutal four gravity burns to correct for the little details I couldn't calculate for earlier and then just over half the surviving enemy M-5s get backlit for an instant. Some of them tank the hits – warship armour is _tough_ but some of them don't. I can see aft-ends disintegrate, ships falling out of formation without engines and fires raging forwards as fuel lines burn.

The Voidseekers careen out of the engagement – even at their acceleration it'll take a while to overcome their velocity, I was doing well to fire both missiles before they were outside the effective range.

What's more important is that multiple nuclear weapons don't just cause physical damage to the enemy drones, the radio pulses also wreak havoc upon their electronic counter-measures. It takes time for them to re-orientate from that – a brief window but one that I knew was coming.

I can't hack their destruct systems or mess with the arming switches for the nuclear warheads still aboard them, those were too well protected. I could crash through some firewalls however and the virus I was inserting only changed one thing: it told the gunnery computers that the autocannon that made up the M-5s primary broadside armament were loaded and ready to fire.

It takes just under two minutes for the onboard computers to deduce what I've done and correct the problem. In the meantime the guns cycle and cycle uselessly while my Centuria take ruthless advantage of the reduced fire to concentrate smashing salvos into ship after ship.

What was once fifty-one M-5s is reduced to fourteen battered hulks by the time they get their guns working again. Even without recalling the damaged _Caspar_ s, I've got a four-to-one numerical advantage.

That's when they finally clue in and try ramming tactics.

Here's a hint: when your ships are so battered that _I_ can out-accelerate you, ramming won't work out. Two of them get close enough to try only to get caught amidship by a Caspar each, which settles the matter decisively.

Battle over, we won and once I re-integrate the damaged Caspars I'd detached earlier my Centuria is almost back to full strength.

So, checklist of things to do: recover the Voidseekers; damage control aboard the Caspars; clean-up my interior where some of my passengers didn't reach sick-bags in time; secure orbitals of Epsilon Indi; wait for the 34th Royal BattleMech Division to arrive and convince them to accept my authority.

Why is it that the talking to people is almost always the hardest part of my plans?

"Tommy, don't _ever_ fly like that again – at least not when I'm aboard!" demands Corvus.

"Right right." I look at my schematics, where one of the few shots that did hit me had left a cargo-bay open to space. "Uh, you might want to check on your 'Mech but you'll need a pressure suit first."

"…my _'Mech_!?"

* * *

 **Entry #34**

 **High Orbit, Epsilon Indi**

 **Lockdale Province, Terran Hegemony**

 **09:30 31 March 2767**

I was so sceptical of what my sensors reported that I poll every ship in the Centuria before I report to Corvus. "Taylor… I think the 34th just arrived."

"Are you sure?"

"Well… they're here, they have SLDF IFFs and a death wish. Who else could it be?"

She frowns. "How do you mean 'death wish'?"

"They hit both jump points with four warships and ten jumpships."

Corvus slaps her face. "The _standard_ jump points? If the Caspars there were under Republican control…"

"Butchered," I confirm. "I mean, I wrote the book on reckless behaviour and even I think that's a bit… optimistic."

It'll take several hours for a signal to reach them so I may as well send it now. It's not a complicated message, I'm essentially relaying Kerensky's message that he's very disappointed in them and is handing them over to me.

I give them a fair chance to absorb that, taking the time to squeeze a tightbeam transmission in the direction of the pirate point where one of McTiernan's spyships should be lurking, and then send them my own message.

"General Collins, Admiral Braso. Under the circumstances it'd be inappropriate to offer you a warm welcome, so I'll cut to the chase. I'm Vice Admiral Thomas Praetorian of the Hegemony Armed Forces and I'm the appointed commander of operations to liberate Epsilon Indi from Amaris. Report your status and readiness to participate in these operations."

It takes several hours for the message to reach them and for a reply to return. In the meantime I amuse them by transmitting simulations of them attacking Epsilon Indi, varying the opposition forces each time. One simulation data package per hour.

Between Simulation Twenty-Seven (all Caspars out of action, SDS batteries on the surface kill half the Division during the Drop) and Simulation Twenty-Eight (the Caspars at both jump points are under Republican control but play dead until the invasion forces have left so that they can polish off the jumpships uninterrupted and then hunt the dropships down) I get a response.

General Ling Pao Collins – the name suggested mixed Chinese-Irish ancestry but he appeared ethnically Chinese to me – was evidently fuming. "I'm not aware of any Admirals by the name you claim and the HAF was dissolved almost two hundred years ago."

"'That which is not dead may not eternal lie', General Collins. And that which man disbands, man can reform if he so chooses. The people of the Terran Hegemony, not without some justice, feel rather abandoned by the SLDF in their hour of need and therefore the Hegemony Armed Forces have been reborn to defend them once more. So are the forces with you going to be an honoured part of those forces, the Epsilon Indi Division in truth, or shall I assume that you're a bunch of mutineers turned pirate… or worse, traitors in service to the Usurper? By the time you get this message it will be April Fool's Day, don't be the fool."

Long before they've even received my message, I get another one.

"What sort of sick game are you playing, sending us those simulations?"

I don't reply directly, but my next message, exactly on the hour, is a reconstruction of the battle I'd fought against the drones defending Epsilon Indi.

If they're too stupid to understand that message then they're too stupid to be left in command.

The time it would take for them to receive my answer and reply arrives… and passes unheralded.

I count out the time it will take for a reply to the last simulation to arrive.

Thirty long minutes after that deadline I receive another signal from them. I say them because this time Collins was alongside Admiral Braso, who opened communications: "Admiral Praetorian, we grasp your rather heavy-handed point and will rendezvous with your fleet over Epsilon Indi." She gave Collins the nod.

With visible effort the man managed to keep his tone professional. "As you have valid codes, I provisionally accept your authority over my Division. I will be lodging a formal protest with the SLDF high command over your behaviour."

…yeah. I'm pretty sure he's not a keeper.

Okay. Admiral Braso seems willing to play ball, at least to an extent. General Collins may be out of touch with reality but he's at least minimally co-operative. I can work with that, for now.

"You know, you could have been more diplomatic about this," Corvus chided me.

"I could have promised them sugar-buns and bubbly – or that the Republicans would turn and run like dogs at the sight of them. Both would be lies, Taylor."

"There are still better ways to say things."

"Perhaps. But let's be honest: I'm going to grind them down. It'll be weeks before the New Dallas and Graham Divisions arrive and the defenders here have had time to dig in. This is going to be a longer and much harder campaign and fighting in its vanguard is the 34th's penance in Kerensky's eyes."

"It's more than that. They're an example."

I miss having a chin I can scratch. "I don't follow."

"Think about it. You know how many of my regiment decided to defect to the Hegemony Armed Forces - and rumour has it that a lot of the Royal Divisions arriving are wavering. Those are the General's best-equipped units and - in theory - the most loyal. He almost _has_ to put a stop to it. In fact, there's no almost about it. Royal Command defecting en masse…" She shudders.

"If he just handed the 34th over to you, that could trigger a rush by other units. It's unacceptable. But sending them to you to throw into a meatgrinder sends the opposite message. And I suggest we watch the supply lines too: I doubt that the HAF will be allowed to draw on SLDF stockpiles if he can avoid it."

"So we're fighting two wars," I say, hoping she'll correct me. "An open one against Amaris and another one – a bureaucratic one – against our allies." To my dismay she nods sharply. "Well shit. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised." Then I have my avatar grin. "Of course, you did say 'we'…"

* * *

 **Entry #35**

 **High Orbit, Epsilon Indi**

 **Lockdale Province, Terran Hegemony**

 **11:00 8 April 2767**

Amanda Braso and Ling Pao Collins look suitably confused as they exit their shuttle and see Corvus standing waiting for them with an honour guard a dozen strong drawn from the Caspar crews.

"Permission to come aboard?" Braso asks, saluting me – the ship, rather. I don't think she's grasped what I am yet.

Collins matches her salute in a perfunctory fashion and doesn't wait for Corvus to return it before lowering his hand. He, I'm quite sure, has no idea at all.

"Welcome aboard THS Praetorian," Corvus says with her own salute. "I'm Admiral Praetorian's chief of staff, Taylor Corvus."

"Was the ship named for him or is it just a coincidence?" asks Braso curiously. "She's obviously not a standard Texas-class."

Corvus opens her mouth to answer but is cut off by Collins: "Who cares. Let's just meet him and get this straightened out."

A Major General outranks a Rear Admiral and a Colonel so however rude that was, he'd usually get his way. Not this time.

"You'll treat my people with respect, Collins." My 'face' appears on the monitor overlooking the shuttlebay. "I can use your division. The jury is still out on whether or not you are worth retaining." I pause until he's gathered his wits and is about to reply and then speak right over him. "Admiral Braso, your flotilla is being broken up and I'm afraid you're losing your flagship. Advise Commodore Mitchell that he's to take every ship except your four destroyers to rendezvous with the new Second Fleet at Graham IV."

Her face falls. I'd be more sympathetic if she hadn't gone along with this crazy scheme. "Once you've got your effects sorted out, we'll discuss your role in the fleet. You're dismissed."

Collins's face is an interesting puce as Corvus gestures for him to follow her towards the lounge. I wait until the doors close before I add to Braso: "I'm going to want full report on why you used a standard jump point, much less both."

"It's standard doctrine to seize the jump points so that you can control the shipping lanes," she protests.

"Standard doctrine assumes the SLDF is deploying overwhelming force, Admiral. I'm going to expect better from you in the future. I'm going to be entrusting you with the protection of the fleet's jump-crews, after all."

In the lounge Collins looks around impatiently. "I thought you were taking me to Admiral Praetorian," he demands of Corvus.

"I thought I told you to treat my people with respect just a few minutes ago," I remind him activating the screen so that he has a face to address. "I'll talk to General Collins privately, Corvus."

She left obediently and I locked the door behind her – not to keep her out but to keep Collins in.

"I thought we were going to talk face to face," he asserts.

"This is as good as it gets, General. I see it's not been made clear to you yet so let me clarify this for you: I am the machine intelligence that controls this ship and by extension all of the drones around it. I'm also, by decree of the Interim Director-General, a Vice-Admiral."

"You're a machine!?"

"A machine you're inside of. Think about that for a minute. And while you're at it, what _were_ you thinking, rushing back here on your own? A single division isn't much to deploy to liberate an entire world." At least in this day and age.

He puts his hands on his hips. "How could you possibly understand? This is our home!"

"I also have a home. A home I have had to withdraw from to preserve forces that can – eventually – retake it. Forces that have then been redirected to save your Division from committing highly expensive suicide in the form of bringing urban warfare to the heart of your pleasant, mostly pastoral world instead of, for example, preparing to liberate my home. Aren't you glad I'm a machine? Otherwise I might be a little bitter."

His eyes are a little wide.

"Am I getting through to you, General? If you, as the man on the spot, had information that Kerensky and I did not then by all means explain it to me. If there is a good reason that Epsilon Indi must be liberated, no matter the cost to the overall strategy of defeating Amaris… then I'm all ears."

"But if you, selfishly, arrogantly, put your personal concerns for your homeworld over your duty then Kerensky was right to get rid of you. And if you keep doing this, then I'll leave you here on your homeworld because the duty of the SLDF is to the entire Star League first, and only then to individual states and worlds. Epsilon Indi is a _hard target_ and while it's economically important, it is not a strategic position. If we lose more than a division liberating it… then it's a net loss for the campaign and we should have just let you die."

"Well that's the heartless machine I was expecting to hear from. All about the numbers."

"Yes. It is about the numbers. It's about thousands dying every day in prisons across the Hegemony. It's about millions of people out of work and going broke because the core of the entire Star League's economy is cut off and being asset-stripped to cater to Amaris. It's about the billions of civilians in the line of fire because Amaris would rather burn a planet to the ground than surrender it."

"It is _not_ about catering to one person's selfish demands." Although it probably looks a lot like catering to my demands, at least considering what I got up to in the first month or two of this year.

"I want to protect my family, and the families of my soldiers. There's nothing selfish about that!" protests Collins.

"What you were doing would, at best, have added your command to the death toll. Not that you'd be more than a blip. The civilian death toll of fighting Amaris is already over sixty million."

"Sixty _million_?"

"Carver V suffered about fifty percent losses to its total population when Amaris decided to cut his losses. The Republicans also, incidentally, had at least one city on Graham IV mined with a remote-detonated mine so that they could take out the leading elements of the liberation force. Do you want that to happen to your home town?"

For a moment the question hangs in the balance before Ling Pao Collins draws himself up and salutes. "No sir, I do not." He pauses. "The Epsilon Indi Division is reporting for duty. What are your orders?"

* * *

 **Interlude #5, Part 1**

 **Caddo City, Trinity**

 **New Dallas, Terran Hegemony**

 **12:00 15 May 2767**

At first Titus Clay was sitting alone at the table but then, at the stroke of twelve, holograms appeared around it. The head of the scratch team of Ministry of Communications workers that had arrived with elements of the Eighth Army had worked wonders getting New Dallas set up with not only a new HPG but a sufficiently stable one to operate a real-time connection to the other capitals of the Star League.

The other capitals… how very strange that New Dallas was counted as such a world now. It would pass, of course. Terra would reclaim the spot soon enough. But today New Dallas was the heart of the free Hegemony.

The white-haired Takiro Kurita sat beside Clay and beyond him was John Davion. To Clay's surprise a small girl was sitting in the First Prince's lap, a cookie in one hand and staring wide eyed at the holograms that must be appearing around the table in the room she and Davion were sitting in. For an instant, Clay wondered if it was one of Davion's children but then he realised the obvious:

Amanda Cameron was appearing before the Star League Council for the first time since Richard had shown her off after her birth.

Beyond Davion the unassuming features of Aleksandr Kerensky could be seen and then, arcing back towards Clay, Barbara Liao, the smirking Kenyon Marik and finally Robert Steiner. The Star League Council, rulers of all humanity… except for the rebelling Territorial States, the occupied worlds of the Hegemony and, of course, the Rim Worlds Republic itself.

"Ladies and gentlemen, our new First Lord," Davion announced, holding up Amanda. The little girl gave a big grin, fragments of cookie visible to them all.

"That remains to be seen," grumbled Kenyon Marik. "I think we've had enough of child heirs after her father."

"The Star League Accords leave us no choice," the First Prince replied coolly. "So long as there is a Cameron candidate, they have a right to the title. And we have no other Cameron to elect." He half-turned and handed Amanda off to someone not included in the field of the camera.

The Captain-General looked around for support but no one else seemed inclined to speak up. Perhaps it was Clay's imagination but he seemed to receive a longer look than the others. Did Marik think he'd make a play for the role himself? If so, he was sadly mistaken. The law of the League was all that was holding it together and Clay would not undermine it.

"Amanda Cameron has my support, of course," the Interim Director-General announced, "But there are some precedents that the Captain-General is right to suggest we do not follow. I think it's evident that placing the full burden of responsibility for the Star League and the young First Lord upon General Kerensky when he was already responsible for the SLDF – and then in a time of peace – it was simply too great a burden for even the greatest of men."

Kerensky looked uncomfortable, as did Kurita and Davion, who were the only sitting members of the Council who remained from that debate, seventeen years ago.

"Are you suggesting we accept his resignation?" asked Steiner slyly.

"Not in a time of war," growled Kurita. "Soldiers appreciate the demands of duty, Archon Steiner."

The gibe at the younger man, who had eschewed military service, hit with stinging force.

"A change of command at this point would be unwise." Clay bowed his head slightly towards the General. "However, it would be unwise to add to the great burden of waging this war… which is after all the largest ever waged by man."

Kerensky returned the nod with gratitude. "I feel that my service as Regent has proven that my service to the Star League is best confined to the role of soldier."

"You may not get out of it that easily," Clay noted with a smile. "I would like to suggest that when our Protector of the Star League retires that his unparalleled service be rewarded by a seat amongst us as the ruler of the Rim Worlds Republic."

Kerensky's face tightened. It wasn't entirely a surprise, the proposal was one that had been discussed hastily by secure communications over the last few weeks. But still, to have it out in the open took forward it an irrevocable step.

"That seems a little premature… we don't even control the Republic at this time," objected Steiner.

"We shall soon." It was Takiro who spoke up. "While my son Minoru reclaims the Combine worlds that were defiled by Amaris' soldiers, my nephew Vincent has been sent to assist General Kerensky in securing the Rim Worlds capital on Apollo. They will then serve as a garrison for the region as the SLDF secures the rest of the Republic."

"Now wait here!" Robert Steiner didn't need a military background to know that that would put DCMS troops not far from the Rim Worlds border with his own Lyran Commonwealth. "How do we know you'll not annex those worlds to the Combine?"

Takiro's smile was serene. "What if we do, Archon?"

Kerensky nodded his head slightly. "Whoever the Council decides to place as ruler over the Republic, it is my advice that they should not rule from Apollo. The politics of that world have shaped House Amaris, one factor among many that have brought us into this pass." He paused. "I see no reason that other Member States bordering the Rim Worlds Republic could not similarly send expeditionary forces with expectations of similar results."

Kenyon Marik and Robert Steiner squirmed. On the one hand, the opportunity to slice off chunks of the Rim Worlds Republic. On the other, in so doing they'd be helping Kerensky, the man of no noble lineage that had somehow risen to a position of power over them.

"I will consult my Generals," Steiner grumbled to save face and Marik nodded sharply.

"It isn't a decision to make in haste," agreed Clay.

"I second the Director-General's nomination of Aleksandr Kerensky to represent the Rim Worlds Republic upon the Star League Council," the First Prince announced. "And I call for an immediate vote."

Kenyon Marik looked appealingly at Barbara Liao. The Chancellor surely wouldn't back Davion on this – they'd been enemies for years and even fought a border war during Kerensky's regency – and that would deadlock the Council.

Liao shrugged slightly and then smiled at Kenyon. "I vote aye. Shall we make it unanimous?"

* * *

 **Interlude #5, Part 2**

 **Caddo City, Trinity**

 **New Dallas, Terran Hegemony**

 **13:00 15 May 2767**

After a brief clarification that Kerensky had no intention of retiring until Amaris was safely dead, the Council took a few moments to process the sudden changes.

"I think it's pretty obvious that we're being managed," Kenyon observed tersely. "So would the other Council Lords like to reveal whatever political agenda you're planning on steamrollering over us today?"

Clay looked at them and smiled. "The next item on the agenda is that even if General Kerensky is unavailable, we should appoint a Regent to fill the role of First Lord until Lady Amanda is of age. Does anyone wish to make a nomination?"

The Coordinator cleared his throat. "I feel that only a member of this council would have the necessary experience. And as we are electing a wartime leader, youth and vigor will be desirable." The old man turned his head to his left. "Can you think of anyone who is suitably qualified, Prince Davion?"

To Kenyon's surprise, the First Prince didn't take the effective nomination with his earlier good humour. "I do have someone in mind," he gritted out. "Thank you, Coordinator."

"I object," Steiner snapped. "The Director-General has already spoken of the importance of spreading the responsibilities left vacant by the death of Richard Cameron. For Davion to be Regent _and_ the First Lord's guardian is hardly consistent with that."

Davion took a deep breath. "I agree. So I nominate Chancellor Liao as the Regent. I trust that no one will accuse the two of us of colluding to the detriment of our respective responsibilities."

"Wise words, Prince Davion," agreed Kurita with a certain amusement. "Do you accept the nomination, Chancellor?"

"But of course. Do you second it?"

The Coordinator nodded benevolently and Barbara Liao rose slightly from her seat to curtsey towards the elder statesman before resuming her seat.

"I move that the appointment of Barbara as Regent be by acclamation," said Clay. "Do I hear an objection?"

There was a sulky silence.

"Madame Regent." Kerensky stood and saluted her formally.

Barbara nodded regally. "General."

"If the Council will excuse me, I imagine that a full report on the war will be required."

"Indeed. But tomorrow, I think. Let us get the politics out of the way today and we can give you our full attention."

The General bowed. "Then if you will excuse me, I will make my escape from politics for today."

"For today, General. Not forever."

Kerensky's image winked out.

"He's going to be a terribly inflexible member of the Council," Liao warned the men still at the table.

"We've never been short of those, Chancellor," replied John Davion.

Kenyon leant forwards. "Wait a minute. You're talking about him as if he'll be our equal. The Rim Worlds Republic is only a Territorial State."

"Oh dear, Captain-General, is your hearing going?" Barbara asked with a wicked smile. "Kerensky was elected as a member of this Council without any restrictions. From the moment he retires there will be seven Member-States, not six."

"Are you out of your mind!?" exploded Robert Steiner. "Do you have any idea how much damage that will do?"

"I think the division between the Member-States and the Territorial States has done enough damage over the last two years. Or did you miss hearing about the Periphery Uprisings in the rush of the Tharkad social circuit, Robert? We've already lost three of them to all practical purposes - the SLDF can't liberate the Hegemony _and_ reconquer the outer realms."

Clay leant forwards. "There is one loyal region out there – the spinward provinces of the Outworlds Alliance have remained faithful to the Star League and President Avellar has declined to send what's left of her military to reconquer them. With the Council's permission I'd like to open negotiations. Allyce Avellar seems open to reason."

He saw the Coordinator smiling knowingly and the First Prince covered his face. "Alright, what's the joke?"

"The Alliance's new President is a naïve little girl," Kurita explained. "My agents inform me that she believe in goodwill to all and simply refuses to believe that 'Mr Amaris' would hurt 'Mr Cameron' or that 'Mr Kerensky' would wage war over it."

"Please tell me he's joking."

Davion shook his head. "He's really not. She's a nightmare to deal with. Completely out of touch with reality."

Clay nodded. "Well, that sounds promising. I'm all in favour of goodwill if I can make it work for me."

"I trust you'll keep the Combine's interest in the area firmly in mind?" suggested Kurita.

"Well since neither you nor John wants the other to have any advantage there, I was thinking of annexing those provinces to the Hegemony if she'll sign off on it."

There was a spluttering sound from the direction of Marik but Clay waved his hand dismissively. "You're all getting the shared worlds back, so I need some sort of new frontier to offer the Hegemony. And with the Hegemony as a friendly neighbour, we may be able to win the Outworlds Alliance back for the League without firing a shot."

"Now who's out of touch with reality?" asked the Captain-General scornfully.

Further conversation was cut off as Kerensky's holograph appeared suddenly back in his seat, a verigraphed HPG message in one hand. "My apologies for the interruption, my Lords and Lady Regent Liao, however I have important news. Admiral Brandt has just informed me that she is launching Operation KAISER today: the liberation of Terra." The General gave Clay a suspicious look and then clarified: "In fact, by the schedule, First Fleet and Terran Hegemony Navy will already have jumped into the Sol System."


End file.
